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The economics of polygamy, continued
(Some) economists, every now and then, look for reasons why polygamy cannot be efficient. How about this?:
Over the last six years, hundreds of teenage boys have been expelled or felt compelled to leave the polygamous settlement that straddles Colorado City, Ariz., and Hildale, Utah.
Disobedience is usually the reason given for expulsion, but former sect members and state legal officials say the exodus of males — the expulsion of girls is rarer — also remedies a huge imbalance in the marriage market. Members of the sect believe that to reach eternal salvation, men are supposed to have at least three wives.
Here is the longer article, which has several interesting parts.
Posted by Tyler Cowen on September 9, 2007 at 03:08 PM in Religion | Permalink
Comments
Many species in the animal kingdom also have harems of females, where some males never get the chance to mate. I think walruses are an example.
I suppose they, too, are inefficient?
Posted by: zlguocius at Sep 9, 2007 3:50:16 PM
Jeff Gordinier had a great piece on the "lost boys" that made the rounds a few years back. Whenever I hear about polygamy being a misogynist institution, I always ask what happens to the leftover men.
Posted by: david at Sep 9, 2007 4:24:09 PM
If all my watching of Animal Planet has given me a correct understanding of the process, the exiled males wander off by themselves, or, depending on the species, perhaps hang around with another male or a small band. Periodically, the younger males approach the leader of the harem and see if they can chase him off. Eventually, one succeeds in killing or exiling the previous leader and then take over. Amongst lions, at least, the winner kills his predecessor's cubs to bring the lionesses into heat so that he can reproduce ASAP. We seem to have done away with these mechanisms.
One can interpret monogamy laws as a cooperative response by a risk averse population of males to the high variance created by polygamous practices. Most males get one wife rather than a few getting twelve and others none. Even in our system, under current rules, some males do get more than one mate either via serial monogamy (if they can afford the alimony, like Pavarotti, or skip on it), or via mistresses, again if they can afford it.
Posted by: Acad Ronin at Sep 9, 2007 4:30:13 PM
Zlgucius" "Many species in the animal kingdom also have harems of females, where some males never get the chance to mate. I think walruses are an example.
I suppose they, too, are inefficient?"
It would depend on the sex ratio of the particular species. Not every species has a nearly perfect 1/1 birth ratio like humans. Even among species that do, there might be other factors that significantly skew the ratio before adulthood. Beyond that, many species that have that type of harem system also have practices where a new male can come in and challenge the alpha male for control of all of his females. In civil society, this largely can't happen, and I doubt such a move would be supported by the women involved.
I've always found societies that practice polygamy interesting in that it is sometimes used as a method to enforce financial equality. By encouraging the wealthy to marry as many women and sire as many children as they can afford, the group as a whole is able to prevent the passing on of large amounts of inherited wealth. The result is that in each generation every male starts out at with about the same advantages, regardless of the success of his father.
Posted by: Mario at Sep 9, 2007 4:44:00 PM
"(Some) economists, [...] look for reasons why polygamy cannot be efficient."
Stooges of the status quo! :-)
Posted by: Gabriel M. at Sep 9, 2007 4:51:27 PM
Let me clarify. I'm not an economist, and I don't know what's meant here by 'efficiency'. (Producing babies at the lowest possible cost? Any change would be worse for at least one member of society?)
I wonder, though, whether anything interesting can be meant by 'efficiency' in the context of the claim "polygamy is inefficient" if many species of the animal kingdom, which presumably have had to run the strict gauntlet of natural selection, are classified 'inefficient' merely because they have harems.
In other words, animal species seem to be *counterexamples* to the claim that polygamy is inefficient.
Of course, I'd like to know what 'efficiency' means here.
Posted by: zlguocius at Sep 9, 2007 4:52:51 PM
Not unlike Hollywood types like Tom Lykis, yet another rich powerful male who teaches that unless you have a few girls "in the bullpen" you are not a "real man."
Posted by: unknown at Sep 9, 2007 5:14:22 PM
Producing on the PPF = efficiency. LOL. Producing can mean anything (probably families)
Hmm... I typed an earlier explanation involving X, Y and babies... but my internet died :(
Posted by: Chewxy at Sep 9, 2007 5:20:14 PM
Obviously they are selecting only those males with appropriate tendencies to good
market behavior in order to make their economy grow in the future.
I have driven by the place. It is somewhat odd to see these long, dormitory-like
buildings in that community, which straddles the state line so as to be able to run
into the other state if the state police from one of them raid the place, as happened
once in the late 1950s from the Arizona side. Apparently there was a Mormon voter
reaction to this against the incumbent governor, and AZ authorities have left the place
to its own devices, more or less, as have the ones in Utah as well.
Posted by: Barkley Rosser at Sep 9, 2007 5:24:13 PM
According to Kauffman’s NK model, for a system of N>7, the mean fitness of local optima is the highest when K is approximately 3. In the context of marriage, 3 partners per capita (has to be well assorted because of the constraint of N>7) delivers the highest mean fitness. I wonder why law and convention set K=1.
Posted by: Yan Li at Sep 9, 2007 6:09:57 PM
Yan Li asks an interesting question, but should know the answer:
According to Kauffman’s NK model, for a system of N>7, the mean fitness of local optima is the highest when K is approximately 3. In the context of marriage, 3 partners per capita (has to be well assorted because of the constraint of N>7) delivers the highest mean fitness. I wonder why law and convention set K=1.
Male coalitional violence is an awesome thing. It easily destroys the things that powerful men value most.
So, these powerful men restrict female choice by enforcing monogamy, and after all, they can easily get around the restrictions. Of course, females don't sit quietly and accept monogamy. They can, and do, choose to make the fathers of their children different to their meal tickets.
Just look at the Taiping rebellion.
Posted by: Loki on the run at Sep 9, 2007 6:36:13 PM
It's good to see that the leftover males are _finally_ not being ignored in journalism about polygamy. As I wrote for UPI in 2002 in an essay entitled "The Problem with Polygamy:"
In reality, however, polygamy victimizes men. You never hear about it because few men want to claim this particular kind of victimhood: that of the sexual rejectee.
I've been following accounts of polygamous societies ever since I saw an article in the early 1980s about a Kenyan man with 150 wives. It set the template for every first-hand description of polygamy that I've read since. The reporter diligently interviewed the youngest wife, who thought polygamy was terrific since it allowed her to marry the richest, handsomest, and most respected man in her village.
He also quoted the oldest wife, who was nostalgic for the days when she didn't have to share her husband with this army of younger wives. Nonetheless, she appreciated her status as her husband's chief of staff. ... The husband, not surprisingly, thought industrial-scale polygamy was an all-around great idea and recommended that all men should marry multiple wives. ...
But who's missing from this picture? Isn't there somebody else affected? This reporter, like all I've seen since him, forgot the existence of the people who were most definitely damaged by polygamy: namely, the 149 guys who didn't get a wife at all because Mr. Marriage-Minded had married 150. I have been looking in vain for 20 years for an article about polygamy that mentioned that for one man to take a second wife means, in the normal course of things, that another man will get no wife at all.
I have come to believe that this blind spot stems from it being virtually impossible for a man to imagine himself as one of the 149 losers, rather than the one big winner.
http://www.isteve.com/2002_Problem_with_Polygamy.htm
Posted by: Steve Sailer at Sep 9, 2007 6:47:10 PM
"Not unlike Hollywood types like Tom Lykis, yet another rich powerful male who teaches that unless you have a few girls "in the bullpen" you are not a "real man.""
I heard him a few times, many years ago. For some reason, he did not strike me as rich or powerful, or at the very least he struck me as somebody very frustrated. I mean, objectively I realize he must make a lot of money, but he didn't seem like a happy guy. Maybe I have my stereotypes, but I tend to think of "ladies men" as being a bit calmer than Mr. Leykis.
On the polygamy thing, it looks like a collusive arrangement among the older men to shut the younger men out. In terms of evaluating norms based on competing societies, it looks like monogamy or semi/serial monogamy has produced societies that people prefer to live in.
Posted by: Keith at Sep 9, 2007 7:16:38 PM
I'm not Mormon myself, but I've been close friends with several since childhood. Bringing up polygamy is a very sensitive issue in that group (east coast) and I've learned to avoid it. The vast majority of them realize monogamy as a superior lifestyle both morally and financially. But this is only the American example. The economics of polygamy seems similar to the feudal system of old, where one very rich man had control over many lower individuals. This rich man, mormon or kenyan, now has complete control over his wives, as they have no means to support themselves otherwise. They do not have their own money and cannot make any 'rules of the house'. I can imagine many of them feel like slaves to a rich man who could not possibly truly love them. They also must be submissive to the older more established wives. These wives are not part of a family, they essentially belong to a glorified puppy kennel.
I'm not worried about the other men, unless they reside in China, there are plenty of women out there. What concerns me is the class difference polygamy creates. A small ruling class and the rest peasants. Didn't Karl Marx have something to say about these situations? Is polygamy, and the economics surrounding it, really that much different from the classical class conflicts?
Posted by: Chris at Sep 9, 2007 9:53:32 PM
I was just contemplating a post on polygamy and sex-selection as good antilibertarian arguments. The libertarian would say, let people marry whoever and how many people they want, of any gender, and include the farm animals if you want. From the standpoint of individual rights, why not?
But the societal side-effects of both of these practices are devastating, if practiced in a large enough scale. Large numbers of unpaired young men is a recipe for turmoil and war.
Polygamy has been largely outlawed. China and India have tried to outlaw sex-selection technologies with little success.
Posted by: mtraven at Sep 9, 2007 10:37:42 PM
It is surprising that we are not being told both sides of the story, ie, that equality for men means restricting choice for women, but I guess, at a time when it is clear that a woman stood up to tanks in TianAnMen square, and Tipper Gore designed the internet and Shakespeare stole all his works from his sisters, I guess it wouldn't do to remind them of their lack of choice.
Posted by: A rude dude at Sep 9, 2007 10:41:12 PM
It is surprising that we are not being told both sides of the story, ie, that equality for men means restricting choice for women, but I guess, at a time when it is clear that a woman stood up to tanks in TianAnMen square, and Tipper Gore designed the internet and Shakespeare stole all his works from his sisters, I guess it wouldn't do to remind them of their lack of choice.
Posted by: A rude dude at Sep 9, 2007 10:42:52 PM
Ummm ... Tyler ... I'm an economist, I'm on the ground near Hildale, and I've been blogging about FLDS polygamy for quite a while (I'm also not a Mormon with a bone to pick with polygamists for giving them a bad name).
There are lots of economic stories we could tell about polygamist behavior.
However, in the case of the FLDS in southwestern Utah, (and also Colorado, Texas, South Dakota, British Columbia and Alberta) we really shouldn't waste our efforts.
The FLDS sect is better thought of as a criminal racket. It is organized from the top down to mete out effective punishments, and to engage in a wide variety of fraudulent (and covering legal) activities.
The lost boys, and other features of FLDS culture make a lot more sense from this perspective. Women are valuable to the culture as one form of productive asset. Men, on the other hand, are earners. If there are fewer opportunities for earners, then you have to cut some of them loose. I guarantee that if each of those young men could qualify for a sub-prime mortgage, that they wouldn't be excluded from the community.
The bottom line: save the economic analysis of multiple wives for the story lines in Big Love.
Posted by: Dave Tufte at Sep 9, 2007 11:49:11 PM
Seems like this nutjob cult is free riding on our larger society, by having us take care of their males. We should send the young, strong, sexual deprived males back. As a group. And, let the old males try to enforce their property rights the old fashion way.
Posted by: Paul at Sep 10, 2007 12:07:30 AM
Of course the Mormons are a nutjob cult, but that does not negate the point. Enforced monogamy reduces female choice.
I would not be surprised if the Lizard Queen did not come out in support of polyamory, seeing as how she is such a strong feminist an all.
Posted by: A rude dude at Sep 10, 2007 1:27:00 AM
The fact that polygamy affects the economy never really occured to me before, but after thinking about it, it does make sense. Even in some tribal cultures where they don't use money polygamy would still negatively affect things. If only the tribal leaders took all the women, the other males would still be able to survive sometimes, but if they were farmers they would have no way to reproduce to raise help to work. The same for these small religious sects in America, these males who are left out or kicked out have to find a new way to survive and make money with little education and no decent start in life.
Posted by: Matt at Sep 10, 2007 2:38:49 AM
For the peoplle claiming polygamy is bad for most men while giving more choice to women: this might be the case in a theoretical polygamous society where women have the choice between being the 3rd wife of someone, the 1st of another or no-ones wife at all. However, in real polygamous societies, the 'choice' is usually limited to one choice: being the 3rd wife.
Sure, it sucks for the men who can't get a wife. But sure also sucks for the women who are basically forced to become some man's property.
Posted by: Great Zamfir at Sep 10, 2007 2:43:10 AM
Ironically from the 'female choice' argument, polygynous societies tend to be societies where the females have little choice at all. If a woman's decision-making authority in the household is limited to her own children, if that, then being the 10th wife of a rich man may well be a better deal than being the only wife of a poor man.
But where household decisions are made by all adults in the household, polygyny becomes essentially polyamory, which exists but is rare, anywhere: the woman's decision-making power is diluted not only by having to negotiate with her husband, but also with all his other wives.
Posted by: Cyrus at Sep 10, 2007 7:14:20 AM
"We should send the young, strong, sexual deprived males back. As a group. And, let the old males try to enforce their property rights the old fashion way."
Best...reality...show...ever.
Posted by: Keith at Sep 10, 2007 7:51:26 AM
inefficiency or inequality?
Posted by: josh at Sep 10, 2007 9:16:13 AM
