Optimal Marriage Fitting for Imperfect Statistics

The reconstruction of the marriage market from imperfect records is solved by the minimization of a distance to the observations under civil status‐specific McKendrick dynamics. To do this, the completion each year of the distribution of ages of bride and groom is also obtained by minimization under the constraints of recorded table margins, avoiding the recourse to ad hoc stylized functions. An empirical case study is presented using data from an administrative subdivision in southern Russia for the period 1867–1916.