Marriage Laws and Growth in Sub-Saharan Africa

Marriage Laws and Growth in Sub-Saharan Africa
Todd Schoellman and Michele Tertilt

Many countries in Sub-Saharan Africa are highly polygynous. The percentage of married men in polygynous unions ranges from 10.2 in Malawi to 55.6 in Cameroon. Polygynous countries are poorer than similar non-polygynous countries, and are characterized by higher fertility, higher spousal age gaps, and lower savings rates (Tertilt 2005).

The economics of polygyny was pioneered by Becker (1974), Grossbard (1978), and Bergstrom (1994). Recently, a small literature has emerged analyzing the link between marriage institutions and economic outcomes (Jacoby (1995), Edlund (1999), Edlund and
Lagerloef (2004), Lagerloef (2005), and Gould, Moav and Simhon (2004)). Tertilt (2005) argues that polygyny might be contributing to underdevelopment in SSA: Polygyny raises demand for wives, which increases the equilibrium bride-price. While men make payments to obtain brides, they are also the recipients of these payments when they sell their daughters. Women thus function as a good investment opportunity. This scheme can crowd out investment in physical assets, lowering the aggregate capital stock. Moreover, the incentives to have children are high. Together, a low capital stock and high fertility lead to low GDP per capita. Based on a calibrated model, Tertilt (2005) argues that enforcing a ban on polygyny might decrease fertility by 40 percent, increase the savings rate by 70 percent, and increase output per capita by 170 percent. If enforcing monogamy raises output, then an obvious questions is: should countries in Sub-Saharan Africa be encouraged to give up their traditions and adopt a law that prescribes monogamy? The United Nations (UN), for example, has been pursuing such a policy. In this paper we analyze the transitional dynamics following a marriage reform. We study how rapidly the economy converges to the new, higher-savings steady state.

We also identify the winners and losers along the transition path. The results may shed some light on recent experiences in countries like Gambia, Togo, and the Ivory Coast that have made polygyny illegal but have found enforcement to be difficult (Tertilt 2006). While some of the resistance may be due to cultural factors, we argue that there are also economic forces that work against moving to a monogamous society. While output might increase in the long run, we find that initial generations of men are clear losers from the marriage reform. Some of the women alive during the reform period benefit from the change in marriage laws; however, their gain is not large enough to compensate the men. Hence, it is di±cult to argue that enforcing monogamy is unambiguously beneficial.