Single Motherhood and the Abolition of Coverture in the United States

• Date: 01 March 2019
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/jels.12210
• Published date: 01 March 2019
• Author: R. Richard Geddes,Shoshana A. Grossbard,Hazem Alshaikhmubarak

Journal of Empirical Legal Studies

Volume 16, Issue 1, 94–118, March 2019

Single Motherhood and the Abolition

of Coverture in the United States

Hazem Alshaikhmubarak, R. Richard Geddes, and

Shoshana A. Grossbard*

Under the common-law system of coverture in the United States, a married woman relin-

quished control of property and wages to her husband. Many U.S. states passed acts

between 1850 and 1920 that expanded a married woman’s right to keep her market earn-

ings and to own separate property. The former were called married women’s earnings acts

(MWEAs) and the latter married women’s property acts (MWPAs). Scholarly interest in

the acts’ effects is growing, with researchers examining how the acts affected outcomes

such as women’s wealth holding and educational attainment. The acts’ impact on women’s

nonmarital birth decisions remains unexamined, however. We postulate that the acts

caused women to anticipate greater benefits from having children within rather than out-

side of marriage. We thus expect the passage of MWPAs and MWEAs to reduce the likeli-

hood that single women become mothers of young children. We use probit regression to

analyze individual data from the U.S. Census for the years 1860 to 1920. We find that the

property acts in fact reduced the likelihood that single women have young children. We

also find that the “de-coverture” acts’ effects were stronger for literate women, for U.S.-

born women, in states with higher female labor-force participation, and in more rural

states, consistent with predictions.

I. Introduction

In the United States in the 21st century, women are substantially less likely to be at the

top of the wealth distribution relative to men (Deere & Doss 2006). The contemporary

gender gap would likely be still more dramatic had states not enacted married women’s

property acts (MWPAs) and married women’s earnings acts (MWEAs) decades earlier

(Shammas et al. 1987). Prior to passage of reform legislation in the 19th and early 20th

centuries, most U.S. states followed the common-law doctrine of coverture to govern a

woman’s property rights within the family. Coverture’s name stems from the fact that a

married woman lived almost entirely under her husband’s legal “cover.” A married

woman—a feme covert—could not make contracts, buy or sell property, sue or be sued,

own her market earnings, or draft wills. If the husband died, his wife could not be the

*Address correspondence to Shoshana Grossbard is at San Diego State University; email: sgrossba@sdsu.edu.

Alshaikhmubarak is at the University of California Santa Barbara and King Faisal University; Geddes is at Cornell

University.

94

guardian of their underage children (Women, Enterprise and Society 2010). In the

unusual case of divorce, the husband retained child custody rights.

Economists have examined the fundamental forces driving U.S. states’ abolition of

coverture, which started around the middle of the 1800s (e.g., Geddes & Lueck 2002;

Doepke & Tertilt 2009; Fernandez 2010). Legal scholars have placed those developments

in an international context by examining the significant changes in married women’s

rights and economic status occurring in many countries in the late 19th and early 20th

centuries (e.g., Chused 1983; Hamilton 1999; Siegel 1994a, 1994b). Others have exam-

ined women’s property legislation in detail, often focusing on legal changes in a particu-

lar state (e.g., Basch 1982; Lazarou 1986; Salmon 1982).

Scholars in law and economics have studied the consequences of major changes in

women’s economic rights in the United States and elsewhere. They have considered

women’s property holdings (e.g., Cohen 1988; Shammas 1994; Combs 2004, 2005), labor-

force participation (Roberts 2009), and school attendance (Roberts 2009; Geddes

et al. 2012).

The acts’ impact on women’s nonmarital births has remained unexamined, how-

ever. We address that gap by focusing on the effect of coverture on women’s nonmarital

fertility. Almost seven out of every 1,000 single women aged 20 to 40 had a child under

age five in the years 1880 to 1920, despite strong social norms discouraging out-of-

marriage births during this time. Studying this demographic dimension is also important

because children motivate asset accumulation by both married and unmarried parents

through the positive bequest motive (e.g., Horioka 2014). Moreover, there is a significant

impact of single parental status on inter vivos transfers to children. For instance, accord-

ing to Kværner (2016), single parents are more likely to transfer wealth to their children

while still alive relative to married parents.

We first present a theoretical framework based on rational choice that generates

predictions regarding coverture’s effect on the probability of women having children out-

side of marriage. Our central prediction is that the institution of coverture (and

coverture-like institutions in civil-law states) bolsters women’s incentives to have children

outside of marriage. Conversely, we expect the abolition of this institution to be associ-

ated with fewer children born outside of marriage.

Coverture reform occurred largely at the state level. Between 1850 and 1920, all

but five states passed laws that were critical in easing the strictures of coverture, and thus

in strengthening married women’s economic rights: the married women’s property acts

(MWPAs) and the earnings acts (MWEAs). Those acts expanded the rights of married

women to, respectively, own their separate property and their market earnings. We pre-

dict that the acts’ passage will be associated with a lower frequency of nonmarital births.

We also expect that the impact of “de-coverture” acts on nonmarital motherhood will be

stronger for literate women than for illiterates, for U.S.-born women than for those for-

eign born, in states with higher female labor-force participation (LFP), and in more rural

states.

We use difference-in-difference analysis, Census data, and probit regression to

examine whether the passage of each act type was accompanied by a reduction in the

likelihood of women having children outside marriage. We test our predictions regarding

Single Motherhood and the Abolition of Coverture in the United States 95