Cinderella Redux: The Unintended Consequences Of Social Security

European laws and customs once prevented parents of commoners (but not of nobility) from disinheriting their children and from distributing the estate unequally.

This custom still survives in France.  Parents must leave their offspring a defined portion of their wealth that is computed according to the number of children.  This portion goes from 50% for one child to 90% for nine children.

There were some good reasons for such restrictive arrangements.   When parents died young, older siblings often enough prevented the younger ones from any part of the parents' estate.  This led occasionally to violence. At other times it left younger people in charge of the community

Sometimes only one of the parents died.  A subsequent marriage of the surviving partner brought stepsisters and stepbrothers into the family, which brought different behavior.  This explains the widespread success of Cinderella's story of defeating wicked stepmothers and stepsisters.

Women often died at childbirth in previous centuries.  Men remarried more often than women, thus explaining the surplus of stepmothers in fairy tales.

The stepmother is often 'wicked' because she tried to eliminate her new husband's daughter to benefit her own children with the inheritance.

Communities developed egalitarian laws not because of any elusive notions of 'fairness,' but because they diminished the chances of violence within the family. The laws also reduced the social burden of penniless orphans.

Reuven Brenner holds the Repap Chair at McGill's Desautels Faculty of Management.  Gabrielle Brenner is professor at HEC.  The article draws on Betting on Ideas (U of Chicago Press).

Read full article: Forbes, February 10, 2011