Social homogamy in 19th century rural Italy with an application of the Gini’s homophily index: A research note

The paper deals with the issue of social homogamy in a sharecropping community of mid-nineteenth-century Italy, Casalguidi. The aim is to provide not only a measure of the phenomenon in a pretransitional population, a topic largely studied for many preindustrial communities, but also and mostly the motives for such a marriage behavior. The present study supports the evidence of high levels of social homogamy in rural contexts along with a strong positive effect of household composition on homogamous marriages and a depressive effect of hard times (epidemics) on the same type of union.