Significance: Polygynous marriage is commonly regarded as a
harmful cultural practice, detrimental to women and children at the individual
and group level. We present counterevidence that polygyny is often positively
associated with food security and child health within communities and that,
although polygyny and health are negatively associated at the group level, such
differences are accounted for by alternative socioecological factors. These
results support models of polygyny based on female choice and suggest that, in
some contexts, prohibiting polygyny could be costly for women and children by
restricting marital options. Our study highlights the dangers of naive analyses
of aggregated population data and the importance of considering locally realizable
alternatives and context dependency when considering the health implications of
cultural practices.
Abstract: Polygyny is cross-culturally common and a
topic of considerable academic and policy interest, often deemed a harmful cultural
practice serving the interests of men contrary to those of women and children.
Supporting this view, large-scale studies of national African demographic
surveys consistently demonstrate that poor child health outcomes are
concentrated in polygynous households. Negative population-level associations
between polygyny and well-being have also been reported, consistent with the
hypothesis that modern transitions to socially imposed monogamy are driven by
cultural group selection. We challenge the consensus view that polygyny is
harmful, drawing on multilevel data from 56 ethnically diverse Tanzanian
villages. We first demonstrate the vulnerability of aggregated data to
confounding between ecological and individual determinants of health; while
across villages polygyny is associated with poor child health and low food
security, such relationships are absent or reversed within villages,
particularly when children and fathers are coresident. We then provide data
indicating that the costs of sharing a husband are offset by greater wealth
(land and livestock) of polygynous households. These results are consistent
with models of polygyny based on female choice. Finally, we show that
village-level negative associations between polygyny prevalence, food security,
and child health are fully accounted for by underlying differences in
ecological vulnerability (rainfall) and socioeconomic marginalization (access
to education). We highlight the need for improved, culturally sensitive
measurement tools and appropriate scales of analysis in studies of polygyny and
other purportedly harmful practices and discuss the relevance of our results to
theoretical accounts of marriage and contemporary population policy.
Below: Location of the 56 study villages included in the Whole Village Project. Ethnicity is coded as the most common ethnicity in each village. Red circle, Maasai village; orange triangle, Rangi village; green diamond, Sukuma village; blue square, Meru village; white diamond, other ethnicity village.
Full article at:
By:
aDepartment of Population Health, London
School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, London, WC1E 7HT, United Kingdom;
bSavannas Forever Tanzania, Arusha,
Tanzania;
cNational Institute for Medical Research,
Muhimbili Medical Research Centre, Dar es Salaam, 11101, Tanzania;
dDepartment of Anthropology, University of
California, Davis, CA, 95616
1To whom correspondence should be addressed.
Email: ku.ca.mthsl@noswal.divad.
Edited by James Holland Jones, Stanford University,
Stanford, CA, and accepted by the Editorial Board September 23, 2015 (received
for review May 14, 2015)
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