“Like Father, Like Son”: The Importance of Fathers in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-century Rural Spain

Abstract

This paper uses the links between children born between 1800 and 1919 and their parents in 12 rural Aragonese villages to analyze the role of fathers in the survival, health, and lifespan of children. The researchers compared the effect of being fatherless (or being motherless) to having both parents alive. The results show that being fatherless increased the probability of death during childhood. Moreover, fatherlessness reduced the average age of death as an adult, a child’s average height, the probability that a child is literate, the child’s socioeconomic status, and the individual’s age at marriage.