ABSTRACT
This chapter analyzes war-related changes in nuptiality in the population of the city of Cracow (Poland). First, it shows that these changes reflect a so-called “marriage squeeze” – a situation in which individuals of one of the sexes around the typical marriage age cannot find a partner that meets the usual criteria because of shortages in the supply of the latter. In the case of Cracow, women who reached marriageable age during and shortly after World War I, more often than before, married men who were older, widowed, or from more distant places. Compared to other generations, they also more frequently remained unmarried. Second, the chapter shows what the timing was of disruptions in nuptiality and argues that decisions on marriages were more sensitive to war-related political and administrative events, as well as to changes in the standard of living, than to mortality shocks.
