February 2, 2006
Economics and mating behavior
I just finished reading the enjoyable 
The Armchair Economist by Steven Landsburg.
If a book can be both accessible and quite challenging at the same time, The Armchair Economist certainly qualifies. I felt like I was barely hanging on at some points and had to reread passages, but some of the points Landsburg makes -- especially about the moral neutrality of markets -- are quite intriguing.
On pages 168-170, at the start of a chapter entitled "Courtship and Collusion: The Mating Game," Landsburg posits that:
In the markets for sex and marriage, men compete among themselves for women and women compete among themselves for men. But men compete differently than women do, in part because men are more inclined to seek multiple partners. ... There are, of course, many people of both genders who fail to fit the pattern, but more often than not, there is a germ of truth in the observation that "a woman seeks one man to fill her every need, while a man seeks every woman to fill his one need."In societies that allow polygamy, it is almost invariably men who take multiple wives, rather than the reverse.
It follows, Landsburg observes, that for "each man with four wives, there must be three men with no wives at all." The upshot is that the competition for women in polygamous societies is quite intense.
Men in polygamous societies "are like spice merchants perpetually resisting encroachments from competitors. Merchants respond by agreeing to divide the territory. Somewhere back in history, the masculine gender decided did the same. By custom and by law, men have managed to enforce a collusive agreement to limit their attentions to one woman apiece. There is a lot of cheating on that agreement, but that is just what economic theory predicts."
In other words, men would love to be polygamous but this ups the competition for available women, so paradoxically they agree to be monogamous to lessen this competition.
In fact [Landsburg writes], the antipolygamy laws are a textbook example of the theory of cartels. Producers, initially competitive, gather together in a conspiracy against the public or, more specifically, against tehir customers. ... That story, told in every economics textbook, is also the story of male producers in the romance industry. Initially fiercely competive, they gather together in a conspiracy against their "customers" -- the women to whom they offer their hands in marriage.... Men have maintained that antipolygamy lawas are designed to somehow protect women. But a law that prohibits any man from marrying more than one woman is not different in principle from a law that prohibits any firm from hiring more htan one worker. I suppose that if such a law were enacted, firms would argue that it was designed to protect workers. Who would believe them?
OK, what do we think of this argument? I have just finished thinking a bit about the issues of marriage markets for my second book, 
Romance on the Road, coming out June 1.
First of all, think to harems in North Africa, the Sahel and the Middle East.
While the women in the household do hold some power to affect household decisions, as Claude Njiké-Bergeret, a colonial Frenchwoman who married a local ruler and joined a polygamous household, describes in her book 
Ma Passion Africaine, this does not begin to countermand the lower status of women in a place such as Cameroon.
Landsburg leaves out of his analysis the ability of wealthy rulers such as Njike to have his cake (many wives) and eat it too (he lords it over both the females in the household and the men in his province who presumably go wiveless due to his sizable harem). And that men form "cartels" to reduce competition for women in a way only further indicates their power in the mating game, that is, their attractiveness due to earning power.
In a way, the female sex tourism I describe in Romance on the Road does demonstrate the way markets correct for over- and under-supply. Which countries have the most love-starved Western women visiting? Places like Greece and the Gambia and Jamaica, where migration patterns, polygamy and/or the shunning of poorer men create a glut of fellows far more attractive to the visiting tourist than to local women.
Romance on the Road has extensive analysis of some of the economic and demographic factors entering into romance tourism by women. Maybe I should invite the engaging Mr. Landsburg to take a look at this phenomenon and provide his take on the matter!
April 4, 2006, update: I e-mailed Professor Landsburg regarding this point and received a prompt reply. His words:
Of course women only reap the benefits of polygamy when they're essentially free to make their own choices. You can go be the fifth wife of the sheik or the first wife of the peasant; in the latter case the peasant will be very glad to have her (after all, four other peasants are going wifeless) and will treat her very well.In this case, polygamy can't hurt her. It only gives her new options she didn't have before. But of course in a society where she's *forced* to marry the sheik, polygamy can be a bad thing for her. I'd contend, though, that even in that case, what's hurting her is not polygamy but her lack of freedom.
That's probably the bottom line, being forced to be part of a polygamous household. How often in all history has a woman such as Claude Bergeret actually chosen voluntarily to be part of harem of wives? Not often, we can be sure.
- posted by jbelliveau at 11:04 AM in Love, Sex, Romance and Travel
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