Simone Wegge, Lake Forest College

This paper examines whether the principle inheritance institutions of West Germany influenced the propensity to emigrate. In an analysis of emigration from the principality of Hesse-Cassel in the 1840s and 1850s, I suggest that such traditions have an influence on the resulting economic structure of a village. Inheritance tradition primarily affects occupational choice and personal wealth, producing distinct economic outcomes for peasants. Given these outcomes, the attraction to the migration option varies across village type. Although families and individuals found important reasons to leave under both systems, it is the primogeniture institution which better promotes emigration, providing support for Habbakuk's 1955 prediction in the Journal of Economic History that the primogeniture institution would be responsible for higher rates of emigration. Further, institutional variations manifest themselves in somewhat diverse patterns of individual emigrant characteristics: in comparison to emigrants from partible villages, emigrants from primogeniture villages took less cash with them, were slightly younger, and more likely to be single.