An Economist' s Perspective on Polygyny
A Demand and Supply analysis of marriage that assumes that marriage markets are free leads to the conclusion that polygyny adds to women's value and enhances their well being. However, wherever polygyny is found institutions are in place to curtail women's freedom and ability to obtain the very best partners in marriage: marriages are arranged for very young women, brideprice is often paid at marriage, employment for women is limited or prohibited, and women's sexual and emotional fulfillment is discouraged by ideological or physical means. Polygyny, an asymmetrical form of plural marriage, tends to serve the interests of the men likely to be polygynists at the expense of other groups. Having the power to institute and maintain polygyny these men also have the power to institute means of preventing women from capturing the gains that they would obtain had they been free to choose their marriage partners. There is no single example of a society that allows polygyny, an asymmetric form of polygamy, and simultaneously gives women the freedom to choose their marriage partners as commonly practiced in Western democracies. Worldwide, in the cultures and societies that have embraced it, polygyny is associated with undesirable economic, societal, physical, and emotional factors related to women's wellbeing. Many of the societies that have tolerated the practice of polygamy simultaneously recognize its harm in the form of institutions that limit the extent that polygyny can hurt women. Introduction. This article is based on a report prepared for the Supreme Court of British Columbia, Canada, when it was considering whether to eliminate Canada's anti polygamy law (Grossbard 2010) It analyzes polygyny (many wives) not polyandry (many husbands) and relies on two assumptions often used since Becker's (1973) path breaking economic analyses of marriage: (1) marriage is an institution that organizes household production, such production including giving birth, raising children, homemaking and many more activities, and (2) marriage markets exist. The economic analysis presented here starts with a Demand and Supply analysis of marriage pioneered by University of Chicago economist Gary Becker. From this analysis Becker (1973, 1981, 2006) concludes that polygyny adds to women's value based on a third assumption: marriage markets are free in the sense that the participants are free to choose and equilibrium prices are allowed to be established where markets clear. The results of a marriage market analysis depend strongly on whether all participants in marriage markets are free to maximize their own wellbeing. However, cultures allowing polygamy invariably also have laws and customs that prevent women from capturing the gains from marriage that could have accrued to them had they been free to choose their husbands. This paper lists and discusses some of these institutions. It then documents some of the harmful effects of polygyny for women and briefly discusses institutions aimed at alleviating this harm. From the perspective of political economy institutions are created and maintained due to the interests and influence of various groups in society. This also holds for marital institutions such as monogamy laws and bride price. The men who have an interest in establishing and maintaining polygyny also have an interest in establishing institutions that prevent women from capturing the gains from marriage that polygyny could have generated in free marriage markets. Gary Becker's argument. When awarding him the Nobel prize in economics the Swedish academy mentioned Becker's contributions to the economics of the family, which include his economic analyses of polygamy. Becker's (1973, 1981) Demand and Supply analysis of marriage markets is based on more detailed assumptions also found in other applications of Demand and Supply analysis, including that (1) brides and grooms can potentially substitute for each other (or be substituted for each other, if others decide about who marries whom and when) and (2) there is competition in the market. In this case, men compete among each other to obtain a wife, while women compete among each other to obtain a husband. Becker considers a marriage market for brides in which the supply is by women. The existence of polygyny does not change the number of women and therefore the supply of brides. In this market the demand is by men who would possibly marry these women. Demand is based on the marginal productivity of women in household production and the number of men. Polygyny allows men to enter the market multiple times, adding to the demand. As a result, assuming that markets for wives are competitive and allowed to clear at the intersection of demand and supply, the higher demand will cause higher market values. Becker concluded that women's market value as brides will rise if polygamy is permitted. While writing my doctoral dissertation under Becker's supervision I supported Becker's conclusion with evidence from cross cultural comparisons (Grossbard Shechtman 1978a, 1978b, 1980) First, I found that societies with polygyny are more likely to have a bride price (sometimes called bride wealth) system than monogamous societies and interpreted that association as evidence of the higher value of women in marriage markets with polygamy. Becker liked it and cited that part of my dissertation (Grossbard Shechtman 1978b) in the following context in his Treatise on the Family: My analysis of efficient, competitive marriage markets indicates..that the income of women and the competition by men for wives would be greater when polygyny is greater if the incidence of polygyny had been determined mainly by the relative marginal contribution of women to output. This view is supported by the fact that bride prices are more common and generally higher in societies with a greater incidence of polygyny. (Becker 1981, p 56) Second, I argued that women's lower age at marriage in polygynous societies also serves as evidence that women have a higher value in these societies than in monogamy. Another student of Becker in the 1970s, Michael Keeley, had associated early age at marriage with higher value in marriage markets in the context of the U.S.A. Based on a Beckerian Demand and Supply analysis Keeley (1977) predicted that the more individual Americans were to gain from being married, the younger they married. His econometric analysis confirmed some of his predictions. For instance, he found that in the 1960s two groups with higher expected gains from marriage married younger: men with higher wages and women with lower wages. I thought of applying Keeley's insights to polygyny: When women gain more from marriage, they are also likely to marry younger. This seems indeed to be the case: women's average age at marriage is 13 or 14 among the Hausa and the Kanuri of Eastern Nigeria, societies with widespread polygyny. The Tallensi, another West Africa tribe, are slightly less polygynous and their daughters marry somewhat later. Here the average female age at marriage is 16 and 17. On the whole, women marry considerably earlier in polygynous areas like Africa and the Moslem world than in monogamous Europe and America. Polygyny also raises the difference in mean age at marriage of men and women (Grossbard Shechtman 1978a, p. 36; 1978b) To his credit, Becker did not cite this piece of "evidence." When Marriage Markets are not Free. Marriage markets may never be free. They certainly are far from free in polygynous societies. The following institutions that undermine women's freedom to choose their partners tend to be correlated with the existence of polygyny. Child brides. Limitations on women's freedom start with these societies marrying their daughters when they are close to the onset of puberty. Could women marrying at age 13 possibly better off than women who had a chance to wait until they were closer to age 20? Anthropological evidence indicates that in Maiduguri, Nigeria, 13 year old girls have very little choice about when they marry and to whom (Cohen 1971) Elsewhere, in my own econometric study of individuals living in either polygamous or monogamous Nigerian households (Grossbard 1976, Grossbard Shechtman 1980) I had assumed that women prefer monogamy and found that they were more able to achieve their monogamy goal when they were in their early twenties than when they are teenagers. If women are forced to marry, it prevents them from taking advantage of the increased competition among potential grooms created by the possibility of polygynous marriages. Becker's argument about the value of polygyny to women will hold in a society where the average age at marriage is 14 only if parents are perfectly capable of representing their young daughters' best long run interests. There is evidence that women in polygynous households in North America also marry at particularly young ages and are substantially younger than their husbands (see the evidence brought to the court of British Columbia in 2010 and 2011, Henrich 2010) Not only are young girls forced too young into marriage likely to suffer but such a system increases the likelihood of early widowhood and financial hardship for women later in life. Brideprice. The existence of a brideprice system is likely to add to women's inability to take advantage of their market value in a polygynous society. Becker (1981) and Grossbard (1978a, 1978b) assumed that women benefit from a brideprice payment, a payment that men make for getting married. In reality this is rarely the case. Where brideprice is exchanged, it typically consists of men paying fathers for the right to marry their daughters. If forced arranged marriages are the standard the possibility of earning brideprice by marrying a daughter off often places the father's need for income above the daughter's best interest. Bride price systems go hand in hand with child marriages. It is easier for relatives to marr