The Patriarchy Index ten years after: the United States around 1900 and the European comparison

This article revisits the Patriarchy Index (PI) a decade after its introduction, extending its scope to the United States and situating it within the broader North Atlantic demographic regime. Using harmonized census microdata (IPUMS USA, NAPP, Mosaic), we estimate PI values for the 1880 and 1910 U.S. censuses and compare them with contemporaneous European populations. We map these patterns at county scale and by race, revealing important internal contrasts: parts of the Northeast and Midwest align with a weak‑family Northwest European profile, while pockets in the South and some Western counties register markedly higher PI scores, at times approaching Eastern European levels. Racially disaggregated maps show white households in some Southern counties with moderately elevated PI values, whereas Black households more often display lower scores, pointing to distinct family‑driven gender dynamics. Spatial autocorrelation highlights a shift from scattered 1880 clusters toward more coherent 1910 hot and cold spots, underscoring a national trend of depatriarchalization alongside persistent local enclaves. Finally, we reflect on measurement limits: the PI remains a powerful comparative tool for family‑based patriarchy circa 1900 but grows insensitive where coresidence and patrilocality are rare; we therefore recommend supplementing it with indicators of male and female wage labor to better capture twentieth‑century transformations.