Marriage in Africa: simple economics.

Marriage in Africa: simple economics. Drawing on significant anthropological literature, this articleaddresses a wide variety of questions related to marriage in Africa. Thearticle argues that the institution of marriage can be understood as aneconomic phenomenon subject to a series of economic decisions. [LANGUAGE NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII ASCIIor American Standard Code for Information Interchange,a set of codes used to represent letters, numbers, a few symbols, and control characters. Originally designed for teletype operations, it has found wide application in computers. ] It is springtime in Zimbabwe, when hearts turn to romance andpockets empty for "mora," the word for bride price bride price:see marriage. in thelocal Shona language. ..Some people are requesting cellphones,second-hand cars or even canisters of gasoline, in this era of chronicfuel shortages and deepening poverty,, to sweeten the deal. ..Localnewspapers report that some prominent families are charging thousands ofdollars at a time when the average private-sector employee earns onlyabout $1,800 a year. 1. Introduction October 3, 200] 'Cattle Prices Are Up. So Is Buying aBridge's Hand' Rachel L. Swains The New York New York, state, United StatesNew York,Middle Atlantic state of the United States. It is bordered by Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and the Atlantic Ocean (E), New Jersey and Pennsylvania (S), Lakes Erie and Ontario and the Canadian province of Times Marriage is like a groundnut groundnut,common name for several different genera of twining herbaceous, leguminous plants with geocarpie (underground fruits), chiefly the peanut. Groundnuts are classified in the division Magnoliophyta, class Magnoliopsida, order Rosales, family Leguminosae. : you have to crack it open to see whatis inside. So goes an Akan proverb, and in this paper we apply the toolsof economic analysis to crack open some of the puzzling questionsregarding marriage. The application to marriage of these. tools issomewhat recent. Marriage is one of those institutions that for a longtime defied economic analysis. Economics is a preeminently Westernsocial science, and Western societies have had a dominant discourse thatmarriage should be based on romantic love. Marriage and .love weresupposed to be irrational, and hence economics, with its presumption ofrational 'evaluation of alternatives, seemed to have little to say.Becker's (1981) famous Treatise on the Family stands out as alandmark in the changing perceptions of the appropriateness of aneconomics of marriage. (1) Despite the twenty years TWENTY YEARS. The lapse of twenty years raises a presumption of certain facts, and after such a time, the party against whom the presumption has been raised, will be required to prove a negative to establish his rights. 2. since the publication of Becker'swork, economists have done little work on marriage in Africa, and sothis paper relies heavily on work by anthropologists. Anthropologyitself has had a strong economics focus when it comes to analyzingmarriage; indeed much anthropological work on marriage feels very muchlike economics in its application of statistics to test the implicationsof models of individual behavior. This approach competes with analternative 'symbolic' approach that sees marriage as astructured ritual where cultural discourses are negotiated. Thisalternative asserts that marriage, and payments such as bridewealth, aremore like performances than like markets where people calculate andstrategize. There is no doubt considerable truth in this assertion formany times and places. The brief news item from Sudan exemplifies howstates sometimes attempt to turn marriage into political statement, inthis case by linking polygyny polygyny/po��lyg��y��ny/ (pah-lij��i-ne)1. polygamy in which a man is married concurrently to more than one woman.2. animal mating in which the male mates with more than one female.3. with 'patriotic' outcomes. Bothanalytical points of view are worth exploring, and in fact may bethought of as the difference between assuming perfect competition andassuming strategic interaction in the political economy domain. The'material' approach treats individuals as'price-takers', bargaining for the best deal within a setstructure. The symbolic approach treats individuals as havingconsiderable power over others, with every marriage act laden withmeaning that affects other people's preferences and decisions. A wide variety of questions regarding marriage are. amenable toeconomic analysis. Consider, for example, the forms of marriage. Why dosome societies prohibit polygyny? Why prohibit same-sex marriage Noun 1. same-sex marriage - two people of the same sex who live together as a family; "the legal status of same-sex marriages has been hotly debated"couple, twosome, duet, duo - a pair who associate with one another; "the engaged couple"; "an inseparable ? Why dosome villages mandate that residents marry partners from other villages?In explaining bans on certain forms of marriage, varied and changingmoral standards regarding sexuality are often more relevant thaneconomics, but there is still room for plausible explanations havingeconomic foundations. Another set of questions focuses. on the causes of changes in theincidence and terms of those marriage forms that are socially permittedor enforced, and the causes of cross-cultural variation in terms andincidence of marriages. These are the more conventional questions ofeconomics. What determines changes in the normal terms, or implicitprice, of marriage? Why is bride price rising in Zimbabwe in 2001? Whatdetermines variation across groups? How many people transact marriagesin different marriage markets? Still another set of questions concerns variation in terms andincidence of marriage across different categories of persons.Anthropological investigations of marriage are dominated by discussionsof bridewealth and dowry dowry(dou`rē), the property that a woman brings to her husband at the time of the marriage. The dowry apparently originated in the giving of a marriage gift by the family of the bridegroom to the bride and the bestowal of money upon the bride by , the major forms of monetary or kind transfersthat take place upon marriage. Some marriages have large transfers,others small. Perhaps the characteristics of the parties involveddetermine the size of the transfers? Another major topic in theanthropology of marriage is the process of identity created and expandedthrough marriage. Marriages create social groups of affines (peoplerelated through marriage ties), and these groups may be important actorsin controlling resources through political processes. Finally, another set of questions addresses government policytowards marriages that are permitted. Economists, more thananthropologists, are interested in the welfare effects of public policyregulating and setting the terms of marriages, or changing theincentives of parties to various kinds of marriages. For example, manyMexican governments have recently moved to try to curb the incidence ofpolygyny by offering a 'menu' of official marriages thatincludes an exclusively monogamous official marriage. Change in thecontent and enforcement of divorce laws presents another obvious avenueby which governments influence marriage. Those are the questions. The problem in answering them, especiallyfor African societies, is the necessity of imposing structure on what isclearly a multi-dimensional and constantly changing and contested set ofrules and practices. Marriage contracts typically encompass amultiplicity of resources flows that may begin even before the officialmarriage ceremony, and may be contingent and so never observed, and mayencompass difficult to observe behaviors, such as sexual practices. Thecharacterization of payments made at marriages has been a centralconcern of a voluminous literature in anthropology, with sharpdisagreements even among fleldworkers studying the same ethnic group.Experts and locals seem to disagree with Verb 1. disagree with - not be very easily digestible; "Spicy food disagrees with some people"hurt - give trouble or pain to; "This exercise will hurt your back" startling frequency. Chanock(1985) remains a brilliant introduction to the pitfalls of assuming acoherent system that predictably responds over time to economic andpolitical changes. 2. Preliminaries We first lay some preliminary groundwork by exploring therationales for marriage, from the point of view of the actors involved.Around the world marriage institutions typically contain bothcontractual and status dimensions (Carbone 2000; Cohen cohenor kohen(Hebrew: “priest”) Jewish priest descended from Zadok (a descendant of Aaron), priest at the First Temple of Jerusalem. The biblical priesthood was hereditary and male. 1987). One way tothink about the status dimension to marriage is to note a peculiarproperty of marriage as a transaction: the state or local jural The principles of natural and positive rights recognized by law.Jural pertains to the rights and obligations sanctioned and governed by positive law or that law which is enacted by proper authority. group isa kind of participant to the marriage contract, along with the bride andgroom and their families. (A jural group' is a society that makesrules that are enforced internally; the rules are usually not written,and enforcement is not by the- state but rather within the group.)Marriage is not just a private contract enforced by the state or juralgroup, but rather an occasion where persons enter into contracts withthe state or jural group itself. Marriages that do not include thiselement of contracting with the state-marriages that are notofficial'- are not achievable as private contracts. This can beseen mos t clearly when it comes to rights over children. In a commonform of official marriage, for example, a man acquires rights over thechildren of his wife. The rights are granted and guaranteed by thestate, and the state often reserves some residual right to terminatethose rights. Private contracts to acquire rights over children, on theother hand, are almost never enforceable; a private person cannotusually contract away rights over children. Without being married, mentypically cannot have legal ownership rights to children, no matter howmuch they might be willing to pay. This is, of course, changing for manysocieties as the force of marriage diminishes. On the contract side, marriages may specify actions that parties tothe agreement can negotiate. The freedom of a woman to visit herrelatives, for example, or the husband's obligation to give hiswife a plot of land, may be negotiated. On the status side, marriagesmay specify a status for husband or wife that cannot be contracted away.Bearing this distinction in mind, the marriage institutions of mostsocieties bundle together, in one transaction three separatetransactions that various parties want to engage in: (1) theestablishment of a household, with expectation of consequent benefits;(2) the creation and transfer of status-contingent rights; and (3) thecreation of prestige.2 Marriage as an enforceable partnership contract. Clearly a marriage contract is in many regards like a partnershipagreement that facilitates establishing a household that makesinvestments, produces services and generates children (Weiss 1997).Services range from the provision of housing to the provision ofinsurance. These services, produced in the household, are not likeordinary, private goods. They usually have moderate degrees of economiesof scale; cooked food and shelter are more cheaply provided for personsliving together than for persons living apart. Household services havemoderate degrees of non-rivalry. Many people can enjoy them at the sametime without infringing on the use or enjoyment of other householdmembers. The goods produced are not pure, private goods. The householdserves as a kind of local, open-access storehouse for all kinds ofgoods. Pots and pans, books, lanterns, bedding for guests, toys, andeducational materials for children; all are available to householdmembers when they might need them. Sharing those items among a lim itednumber of persons greatly enhances welfare, since anyone person. isunlikely to need them all the time, or at the same time as the otherhousehold members. Marriage contracts commit parties to a continuing economicrelationship, and this enables investment in specialization andself-enforcing mutual insurance. Individuals are typically reluctant tospecialize or insure others unless they are sure that the relationshipwill be long-lasting; an agreement to mutually insure each other againstcalamity would be of little use if you suspected that your partner mightrenege on Verb 1. renege on - fail to fulfill a promise or obligation; "She backed out of her promise"go back on, renege, renegue oncountermand, repeal, rescind, revoke, annul, vacate, reverse, overturn, lift - cancel officially; "He revoked the ban on smoking"; their commitment whenever it suited them. Marriage then is amore binding commitment to share the benefits of specialization andinsurance. Households are also efficient places to raise children. Childcareis typically cheaper to provide in a group setting. As any parent knows,the marginal cost Marginal costThe increase or decrease in a firm's total cost of production as a result of changing production by one unit.marginal costThe additional cost needed to produce or purchase one more unit of a good or service. of a second child is considerably lower than themarginal cost of the first child. More importantly, long-term marriageminimizes the likelihood of the possible adverse effects on children offrequent change in adult care- givers. A parent wishing to ensure largeinvestment in his or her children will likely seek a partner willing toenter a long-term relationship. So there is a straightforward economic reason to think of marriageas a contract for the establishment of a household. This view ofmarriage has much to commend it. For one thing, it explains the declinein marriage in advanced industrial economies. Modem appliances havereduced greatly the costs of single-person households. Daycare centershave emerged to provide economies of scale in child care, as wealthysocieties can afford special controlled environments that are safer forchildren, with plenty of toys and play structures to keep them busy withless supervision. More to marriage than household production But marriage is not only about the establishment of a household. Ifit were, we might not expect to see so much uniformity in householdstructures. Around the world, households have seemed to consistdisproportionately of monogamous, heterosexual couples (Laslett and Wall1972). We do not often see marriage contracts among larger groups of menand women. It is not difficult to imagine, even in a very poor country,many of the services mentioned earlier. being provided by a variety ofalternative institutions, ranging from communal kitchens to nunneries todormitories. In those places, we would see little marriage. Moreover, werarely see marriage contracts that are silent on the question of rightsand obligations regarding sexual activity; most contracts are quiteclear (explicitly or implicitly) about some degree of exclusivity. (3) Two aspects of marriage in particular are not like a partnershipcontract. First, marriage is an occesion where prestige is garnered.Second, as noted above, marriage is a transaction involving the creationand transformation of status-contingent rights. The importance of rightsis particularly salient in most African societies, for the simplerreason that one of the parties to the marriage, the young girl,typically has few rights over her own actions. For the young woman,marriage is about creation and transfer of her rights, and less abouther voluntary entry into a contract to create a household. Marriage as an occasion where rights are created and transformed Rights are properties of persons that are not easily alienable The character of property that makes it capable of sale or transfer.Absent a restriction in the owner's right, interests in real property and tangible Personal Property are generally freely and fully alienable by their nature. bythe person to whom the right appertains. Status-contingent rights arerights that a polity does not see as universal, but rather appertainingto persons of well-defined social status. Marriage typically generatestwo sorts rights for marriage partners: rights they will have overchildren, and rights over the sexual services of each other. Inaddition, for most African societies the rights of a father over hisdaughter are transformed into rights of a husband and his kin over thewife. Finally, marriage also generates rights that children who emergefrom the marriage will have over their mother and father and thefamilies of their parents. (5) For many commentators, African marriages are primarily gearedtoward establishing rights over children. (6) Children are valuable bothintrinsically and for the resources they generate when they are adults?As valuable 'goods', property rights over children are acentral feature of the economic organization of any society. Marriagecan be thought of as the social occasion where. well-defined propertyrights over children are re-assigned. (There is considerable varietyamong ethnic groups over who retains rights over children bornout-of-wedlock, and how those are transformed at marriage.) Rights overfertility or children are often tied to bridewealth payments. Whenbridewealth is paid, the husband typically takes full control rightsover children. Sometimes the rights over children are the primarypurpose of bride wealth bride wealthn.A payment in the form of money, property, or other valuable asset that is made by or on behalf of a prospective husband to the bride's family in certain cultures or societies. Also called bride price. . For instance, in some situations where a manhas paid bridewealth and the wife then runs off with a lover. If thewoman had children, they stay with the husband, and the lover does nothave to restitute res��ti��tute?v. res��ti��tut��ed, res��ti��tut��ing, res��ti��tutesv.tr.1. To bring back to a former condition; restore.2. To refund.v.intr.To undergo restitution. the bridewealth paid by the husband. If the woman hadno children, then the lover will have to restitute the husband for thebridewealth be paid. (8) Parties to a marriage conunit themselves to sharing in rights overchildren, and to binding themselves not to alienate those rights. Threecaveats should be mentioned. While children cannot be 'sold',they can be 'rented', and the issue of child fostering hasbeen a perennial concern in the social science of African childhoods(Bledsoe 1990). Moreover, since children will grow up to become adults,a tension exists between rights of parents over children, and theability of the child cum adult to exercise his or her willindependently. It is hard to even imagine a society where parentsmaintained their strong rights over a child's behavior beyondadulthood. The reality of the transition from childhood to adulthood isthat rights of parents over children diminish sharply at certainwell-defined social occasions ritualized as rites of passage. Moreover,persons before they are born enjoy certain rights after they are born.The publicly recognized parents of those chilren are under obligationsto actively secure those rights, to the best of their abilities. Woman-woman marriage', a common institutional arrangementinvolving from five to ten percent of the female population in manyregions, underscores the importance of rights transfer as an element ofmarriage. An older, perhaps wealthier, woman marries a younger woman sothat the older woman might own the children (Amadiume 1987; Cadigan1998; Greene 1998; Herskovits 1937; Taraore 1941). The older womenbecomes the 'female husband', and has the same rights overchildren as a man might; indeed, she might be considered to have malegender. (9) Marriages change the allocation of prestige Other disciplines have long understood the salience sa��li��ence? also sa��li��en��cyn. pl. sa��li��en��ces also sa��li��en��cies1. The quality or condition of being salient.2. A pronounced feature or part; a highlight.Noun 1. of prestige inhuman conduct. It seems clear, from initial thinking in economics on thesubject, that if a norm for what activities generate prestige isdetermined, then people will respond strategically to that norm.Understanding the strategic response to actions that generate prestigehas been a recent growth industry in economics. (10) In a marriage, the party with higher prestige lends its prestige tothe party with lower prestige, or the prestige of both parties may bereinforced. The basis for prestige varies from society to society, andtypically involves wealth, education, or social class or caste. Thinking about prestige may resolve a conundrum in the economics ofmarriage: why is dowry-- payments that the bride's family makes tothe groom's family upon marriage--so prevalent in India whereasbridewealth is so prevalent in Africa? If one thinks that the underlyingeconomic conditions of peasant society in India are fairly similar tothe underlying conditions of peasant life in many parts of Africa, onemight wonder why the two areas should have such different patterns ofmarriage. One of three possibilities might be the case, if we assume theunderlying economic fundamentals are the same: (1) either money andpeople are very fungible A description applied to items of which each unit is identical to every other unit, such as in the case of grain, oil, or flour.Fungible goods are those that can readily be estimated and replaced according to weight, measure, and amount. , so that the quality-adjusted prices areroughly comparable, i.e. dowry is accompanied by many more rights forthe woman and obligations for men in India (the 'nettransaction' is the same); or (2) somehow in a social situationwhere marriage payments signal information about family quality toothers, societies can get 'stuck' in equilibria wheredeviations from payment no rms signal disadvantageous dis��ad��van��ta��geous?adj.Detrimental; unfavorable.dis��advan��ta characteristics,and so families continue to adhere to adhere toverb 1. follow, keep, maintain, respect, observe, be true, fulfil, obey, heed, keep to, abide by, be loyal, mind, be constant, be faithful2. . the norm; or (3) exogenous'culture' in India prescribes a certain arbitrary rule thatfamilies where women married up the caste ladder earned prestige. This latter case is analyzed by Anderson (2001), who focuses morenarrowly on the question of dowry inflation. Anderson wants to explainwhy dowry has risen dramatically over the last decades in India andPakistan. If anything, one might think the-reverse should be happeningif, as seems likely, men were the relative beneficiaries of the slow butsteady growth in income. As men desire women in the marriage market, thehigher their incomes the more women, or women s services, they might bewilling to acquire. Anderson suggests that a contrary process might beat work, where rising and more dispersed income levels leads successfulfamilies within each caste to more often pay dowries to buy into highercastes. The ratcheting nature of prestige seems to dominate other effectsin some African contexts. Masquelier (2001) describes for a Nigeriantown the common practice of indirect dowry, where grooms pay bridewealthto the mother of the bride, who then adds her own savings to endow herdaughter with a large trousseau with an expensive bed as centerpiece.Over the years the value of the dowry has risen rapidly, as the publicdisplay of bed, pots. pans, mattresses and other household items leadsto a competition over prestige. Most interestingly, the indirect dowrypersisted despite a vigorous 'reforming' Islamic movement ledby males who tried to limit bridewealth and dowry displays. Ensminger and Knight (1997) also follow this line of thinking,explaining how indirect dowry gradually replaced bridewealth in the Ormacommunity of northeastern Kenya. According to according toprep.1. As stated or indicated by; on the authority of: according to historians.2. In keeping with: according to instructions.3. them, wealthy. fathers ofdaughters desisted from requesting bridewealth in order to makealliances with other wealthy families. Payments among the Orma elitedeclined relative to those of poorer classes. But without a clearintuition specifying how prestige is allocated, the authors have noreason explaining why the process could not have been the other wayaround: why did not wealthy fathers of sons offer to pay more fordaughters of the wealthy? This brief discussion of the household formation, rights, andprestige suggests the need for some simple analytics of marriagemarkets, upon which more complicated models might be elaborated. Beforeproceeding to model-building, however, some empirical regularities andcontroversies should be addressed. 3. A model of terms and incidence of marriage To summarize, marriage is an occasion where rights, services,status, and prestige are transacted between bride and groom and theirrespective families. Marriage in many societies has numerous economicdimensions. The new couple often merges their previously separatefinances. They move into a shared residence. They cook meals togetherand perhaps sleep in a shared bed. They raise children (and livestockand pets) jointly. The decision is not one to be taken lightly, and therights and obligations of each partner to provide for and to cherish thepartner are often spelled out by social norms, laws, and implicitunderstandings: We can imagine a kind of conjugal Pertaining or relating to marriage; suitable or applicable to married people.Conjugal rights are those that are considered to be part and parcel of the state of matrimony, such as love, sex, companionship, and support. contract that sets theterms, or price, of a marriage. Following Friedman (1990), suppose that everyone in a society hassome idea of the bundle of rights The bundle of rights is a common way to explain the complexities of property ownership. Teachers often use this concept as a way to organize confusing and sometimes contradictory data about real estate. , services, status and prestigetransacted in a 'standard' marriage contract. (11) We may thenthink of assigning a monetary value, from the point of view of thewoman, to deviations from the standard contract. (Not all deviations inthe various dimensions to the contract will be fungible, in this sense,but for now the assumption is useful.) This monetary value of deviationsfrom the standard contract is the 'price' in the marriagemarket, and that price fluctuates so that the supply of brides availablein the market is equal to the demand for brides. The price may beinterpreted as the difference between the value, to a woman, of amarriage contract that implies a given bundle of rights, obligations andpayments, compared with the standard contract. The analogy is with computers. For the past several decades, theprice of a given amount of 'computing power' falls every year,even though the price of 'computers' may rise or stay thesame. The commodity being transacted in the computer market isconstantly changing. So a contract that specifies that women should worklonger than they are normally expected to implies a lower price for thewoman; the man gets more of a woman in the marriage. If the contractspecifies that a woman does less work, or is freer to do as she likes,compared with the ordinary contract, then the man is paying more than hewould ordinarily. Following convention, a positive price is'bridewealth', and involves net payments from a groom to thebride or bride's family (Haanstad 1996). A negative payment is'dowry', and the bride's side pays the groom's side(always comparing payments to the standard contract), A positive pricecan then be interpreted as a situation where the implicit contract isfavorable to the woman (i.e. it may invo lve the man turning over assetsto his wife, when he ordinarily might not be obligated to do that). This view helps us to understand that since marriage involvescomplicated transfers of rights, the money trading hands during themarriage ceremony may bear little relation to the true price of amarriage. For instance, if a larger sum of money is paid at the time ofmarriage, from the groom to the bride, but the man now has fewerobligations to his wife, the price of a wife may be falling rather thanrising. For empirical work this poses a problem (especially if marriagesinvolve payment flows from both bride to groom and groom to bride); inorder to find out whether brides are really more expensive, researchersmust collect a wide variety of data on marriage transactions and theprovisions of the implicit contract. A very simple model of marriage, represented in the Figure 1,assumes three things: demand behavior of grooms is such that quantity ofwives demanded declines when the price rises; quantity of bridessupplied (by women) rises when the price rises; and the price adjusts inthe marketplace until the supply offered is equal to the demand. Thesupply curve is described by S(p, Z) and demand curve by D(p, W), whereZ and Ware other independent factors that determine supply and demand,respectively. The independent or exogenous factors may overlap, andinclude such things as economic opportunities for women and men,opportunities from migration, and legal age at marriage. The equilibriumprice Equilibrium priceThe price at which the supply of goods matches demand. p* in the market must be such that the quantity supplied equalsthe quantity demanded, or S([p.sup.*],Z)=D([p.sup.*],W). The price levelis endogenous; it is determined by the other factors. The first thing to do with Figure 1 is to understand the processwhereby the price adjusts to clear the market. If the price were fixedat some arbitrary level (by a government, say), then we can readily seethat there would be strong incentives at work tending to changebehavior. Suppose the government prohibits all monetary payments atmarriage, making the implicit price much lower than normal (say it wasconvention for men to pay a sum to women in exchange for rights over thewoman s labor allocation). There is an excess supply of men, and somemechanism will have to ration the men. The men who are rationed out ofthe market will be unhappy, and will seek ways to pay women to choosethem rather than other men. A black market for bridewealth paymentsmight arise, with hidden gold jewelry exchanged at wedding ceremonies!In fact, African government have tried on numerous occasions to regulatebridewealth payments, including Niger in 1975 (Masquelier 2001),Cameroon during the early colonial period Colonial Period may generally refer to any period in a country's history when it was subject to administration by a colonial power. Korea under Japanese rule Colonial America See alsoColonialism (Guyer 198 6, p. 206), andKenya during the colonial period (Shadle 2000, pp. 168-74). The second thing to use the model for is to ask what happens in themarriage market when there are changes in the exogenous variables. Forexample, suppose that population grows, so that the younger cohortsbecome progressively larger than older cohorts. Further suppose that thesociety in question has a fum rule that men are only to marry youngerwomen. Then each year the cohort of women in the marriage market growsmore rapidly than the cohort of men; the supply of wives shifts out.What happens? As Figure 2 makes clear, there is a fall in the price, oran increase in dowry. This 'marriage squeeze' hypothesis is aleading contender for understanding the much-discussed problem of dowryinflation in India. Anderson (2000) has recently criticized this marriage squeezehypothesis. The problem with it is that it treats the marriage market asa one-off event. But what will women who do not get married in theinitial market do? As the more complex model Anderson developedsuggests, they will go into the informal marriage market. Measures ofdowries and bridewealth that do-not correctly take into account theexistence of informal markets are bound to be somewhat misleading ifgeneralized to the entire marriage market. We noted earlier that many commentators see increases inbridewealth in African societies. Why does the marriage squeeze logicnot apply? Population was growing rapidly in most African countries, atleast until the AIDS crisis. And African men also marry younger women,as a rule. So bridewealth should be falling, and even turning intodowry; by this simple model. Something else must be changing, increasingthe demand for wives or reducing the supply of wives, or else the modelis not right. Figures 3 and 4 suggest some of the difficulties ofmodeling marriage markets. Suppose the incomes of men and women werechanging. If the incomes of men were rising, then men might demand morewives; unless the incomes of fathers were rising, and their daughterswere 'normal goods' that they were less willing to part from,so the supply of brides falls (the now wealthy father enjoys the companyof his daughter, or wants her to go to school). Alternatively, if theincomes of women were rising, men might demand more wives,, but womenmight be reluctant to get married. Alternative possibilities are consistent with the same rise inbridewealth price, but the incidence of marriage (or perhaps morelikely, the age at marriage) would be quite different. The last thing we can do with the simple model is summarizeBecker's (1981) path breaking analysis of polygyny. He asked thequestion whether banning polygyny was in the interest of women, anddeveloped the paradoxical (for his American audience) proposition thatpolygyny would typically be good for women. (12) We implicitly assumedabove that men were demanding a single wife. Suppose now men wereallowed to many more than once. What would be the effect? Plainly anincrease in demand. If we interpret the price as representing deviationsfrom a standard monogamous contract, then the supply of women staysexactly the same. But as the amount of bride wealth increases, morewomen will be willing to enter' marriages, even polygynous po��lyg��y��ny?n.1. The condition or practice of having more than one wife at one time.2. Zoology A mating pattern in which a male mates with more than one female in a single breeding season. marriages. As Friedman (1990) puts it, there is nothing really differenthere from a rule that said people could only have one car. Relax therule, and the suppliers of cars (or wives) are better off. Given the heated political debates over banning polygyny, it issomewhat surprising that the economics literature has not yet developedany convincing arguments against polygyny. If polygyny is so favorableto women, why was it often banned? There is no cross-country analysisfor African countries or for tribes in terms of bans on polygyny, thoughthere is a lively literature explaining the varying incidence ofpolygyny, see White (1988) and White and Burton (1988). Hunt (1991)suggests that the 1950 colonial ban on polygamy polygamy:see marriage. polygamyMarriage to more than one spouse at a time. Although the term may also refer to polyandry (marriage to more than one man), it is often used as a synonym for polygyny (marriage to more than one woman), which appears in Belgian Congo Belgian Congo:see Congo, Democratic Republic of the. arosefrom a conflict between the colonial authorities and educated elite; theban was unusual in declaring polygyny illegal in Urban areas. For theUnited States United States,officially United States of America, republic (2005 est. pop. 295,734,000), 3,539,227 sq mi (9,166,598 sq km), North America. The United States is the world's third largest country in population and the fourth largest country in area. , Anderson and Tollison (1998) argue that banning ofpolygyny in Utah by the Edmunds Act The Edmunds Act, is United States federal legislation, signed into law on March 23, 1882, declaring polygamy a felony. The act not only reinforced the 1862 Morrill Anti-Bigamy Act but also revoked the polygamists right to vote, made them ineligible for jury service, and prohibited of 1882 was partly influenced bymen's fear of women getting better terms out of marriages if theyhad the option of moving to Utah and entering polygynous marriage. Aswith other argl.lments justifying government regulation, there wouldhave to be some non- pecuniary externality A pecuniary externality is an externality which operates through prices rather than through real resource effects. For example, an influx of city-dwellers buying second homes in a rural area can drive up house prices, making it difficult for young people in the area to get onto the arising from polygyny. Onecould imagine, for example, that widespread polygyny entails eithersubstantial delay in age at marriage for many men, or hastening of ageat marriage for girls, or else entails positive and significantprobability of non-marriage for some men. If there are positiveexternalities from marriage, then 'spreading women around' sothat every male has a reasonable expectation of marriage afteradolescence could increase overall welfare, even while making worse offsome women who would have joined polygynous households. For those who might object to this whole line of reasoning Noun 1. line of reasoning - a course of reasoning aimed at demonstrating a truth or falsehood; the methodical process of logical reasoning; "I can't follow your line of reasoning"logical argument, argumentation, argument, line of usingsupply and demand analysis to think about marriage, the evidence infavor of a considerable economic dimension to marriage is convincing. Three kinds of evidence are key. First, cross-sectional variationin marriage seems to be in. accord with rather obvious economichypotheses. Jacoby (1995) finds quite clearly that men with greaterwealth have more wives, and that conditional On wealth, men with moreproductive farms have more wives, and that taller men have more wives.(13) This accords with a widespread view that the spread of cash cropsfor export (coffee, cocoa) has lowered the incidence of polygyny becausewomen's labor was typically more valuable in food crops. MulderBugerdorff (1995) takes a more explicitly Darwinian perspective andfinds much evidence consistent with the hypothesis that men in Kipsigicommunities in Kenya treat marriage as a mechanism to maximizereproductive success Reproductive success is defined as the passing of genes onto the next generation in a way that they too can pass those genes on. In practice, this is often a tally of the number of offspring produced by an individual. (most tellingly, she finds that age at menarche menarche/me��nar��che/ (me-nahr��ke) establishment or beginning of the menstrual function.menar��cheal me��nar��chen.The first menstrual period, usually during puberty. leads to earlier marriage). Second, marriage payments fluctuate overtime in ways consistent with economic hypotheses. Again BorgerhoffMulder is a good reference, suggesting that Kipsigi males' interestin paying bridewealth to secure wives diminished over time, as the priceof maize fell and the returns to child and female farm labor declined.Third, evidence suggests that variation across regions and societiesalso often accords with basic hypotheses. Kaufman and Meekers (1992),for example, suggest that differences between West Africa West AfricaA region of western Africa between the Sahara Desert and the Gulf of Guinea. It was largely controlled by colonial powers until the 20th century.West African adj. & n. , East Africa,and Southern Africa can be explained in partly in terms of varyingstatus of women. The authors do remind researchers that simplistic sim��plism?n.The tendency to oversimplify an issue or a problem by ignoring complexities or complications.[French simplisme, from simple, simple, from Old French; see simple economic modeling is likely to be unproductive, but clearly economicdecision-making is important. It should be apparent that this simple model represents the demandsfor and supplies of husbands as if husbands were homogeneous. Men andwomen differ greatly in many dimensions, from tastes to habits to looks;any marriage market will have implicit prices reflecting that variationin quality. We could also imagine amending the simple model to includesome room for bargaining when men and women meet. The price in thesimple model is the normal price for a standard marriage with standardpartners. A special person might command more than the normal price.Just as we model a labor market labor marketA place where labor is exchanged for wages; an LM is defined by geography, education and technical expertise, occupation, licensure or certification requirements, and job experience in terms of supply and demand, knowingthat individual workers and employers bargain over many particulars of alabor relationship. Bernard (1966, p. 118) related a custom of the Bisain Burkina Faso Burkina Faso(burkē`nə fä`sō), republic (2005 est. pop. 13,925,000), 105,869 sq mi (274,200 sq km), W Africa. It borders on Mali in the west and north, on Niger in the northeast, on Benin in the southeast, and on Togo, Ghana, and : upon marriage and presentation to a husband'shousehold, a girl might fast, and if she fasted for a long time thehusband would have to bring her a 'gift', usually an animal,that will become her property. If she fasted a longer t ime (more than15 days), some informants said she had the right to demand a girl, to dowith as she wished, and particularly to give out in marriage to whomever whom��ev��er?pron.The objective case of whoever. See Usage Note at who.whomeverpronthe objective form of whoever: she wished. Thinking of the main feature of the marriage market as thevariation in quality, or how bargaining determines prices because thetransactions costs of 'shopping' in the marriage market arevery high, leads to different models of marriage, known as matchingmodels. These models typically assume that people search for partners,make tentative contracts, break contracts and search again, untileveryone is satisfied with their partner, in the sense that no oneprefers to reenter re��en��teralso re-en��ter ?v. re��en��tered, re��en��ter��ing, re��en��tersv.tr.1. To enter or come in to again.2. To record again on a list or ledger.v.intr. the marriage market, search for a partner, andconvince that person of matching with them. 4. Government policy in marriage As we have noted, marriage in Africa, as elsewhere, is political.Political processes do more than simply distribute property rights. Theyalso restrict and encourage the form of economic transactions. For thisreason, there can be no presumption that marriage policy is neutral inaffecting outcomes in terms of household division of labor and welfare.The Beckerian view of marriage has tended towards this neutralityposition. Fafchamps (1997, p. 20), for example, argued that marriagepayments "at the onset of the union itself, [make] it difficult foran equity-minded policy maker to durably affect the intrahouseholddistribution of welfare." The Fafchamps argument is this: sinceonly the net bridewealth matters, and the components of bridewealth thatare negotiated are fungible, then a policy change that changes someaspect of the marriage transaction simply spills over into otherdimensions Other Dimensions is a collection of stories by author Clark Ashton Smith. It was released in 1970 and was the author's sixth collection of stories published by Arkham House. It was released in an edition of 3,144 copies. . The net bridewealth will be the same. But this cannot be ageneral result, for by forbidding contracting on certain d imensions,the range of potential contracts that marriage partners might makechanges, with consequent welfare effects. Changes in policy mightunwittingly lead to outcomes the opposite of those intended. Much inkhas been spilled in the United States and other industrial countries,for example, over whether the switch to no-fault, unilateral divorcechanged behaviro} (14) Consider, for example, a sketch of a model that shows thatgovernment intervention, by forbidding contracting on certain dimensionsor by changing riglltsthat are assigned as part of marriage, has effectsthrough the marriage market on behavior. Assume women have investmentprojects that yield returns in the future. Women contract for marriagein the present, and in the marriage negotiations money can be exchangedas bridewealth or dowry. But one thing cannot be negotiated: residualclemency Leniency or mercy. A power given to a public official, such as a governor or the president, to in some way lower or moderate the harshness of punishment imposed upon a prisoner.Clemency is considered to be an act of grace. in the second period. The husband, though marriage, becomes theresidual claimant for all the wife's activities. The government orjural groups enforces this rule. Plainly the woman will not make theinvestment if the husband has no 'commitment device available toassure her of the return from the investment; she will not reap thebenefits. Changing the policy affects the investment behavior. (15) Theproblem is two-fold. Men cannot commit to compensating their wives onthe basis .of investments wives made before their m arriage. Women uponmarriage cease to own their activities. The mistake of Fafchamps andBecker is to assume that activities in marriage are not subject to moralhazard Moral HazardThe risk that a party to a transaction has not entered into the contract in good faith, has provided misleading information about its assets, liabilities or credit capacity, or has an incentive to take unusual risks in a desperate attempt to earn a profit before the . But plainly there is moral hazard in conjugal interaction, andso marriage contract needs multiple dimensions to reduce inefficienciesof moral hazard. This discussion bears some similarity to the discussionby Geddes and Zak (2000) on the 'rule of one third', where awidow inherits one-third of the husband's estate should lie die.intestate The description of a person who dies without making a valid will or the reference made to this condition. intestateadj. referring to a situation where a person dies without leaving a valid will. . Geddes and Zak interpret the rule as an informal institution(enforced by the grandfather paterfamilias) having the effect ofensuring investment in children. One example of government action is in the area of remedy forbreach of promise. For many societies, sexual relations sexual relationspl.n.1. Sexual intercourse.2. Sexual activity between individuals. outside ofmarriage remain a legally enforceable breach of the marriage contract.In some places adultery is a criminal offence. Chanock (1985, p. 179)notes that in 1944 in Zambia the Ngoni Native Authority established a"right to damages in the event of adultery" and this "newpayment grew in both value and significance." Lovett (1996) reportshow the colonial authorities sided with male elders in Western Tanzania,imposing fines and even imprisonment ImprisonmentSee also Isolation.Alcatraz Islandformer federal maximum security penitentiary, near San Francisco; “escapeproof.” [Am. Hist.: Flexner, 218]Altmark, theGerman prison ship in World War II. [Br. Hist. for women committing adultery.Comaroff and Roberts (1977) have as extensive discussion of compensationfor children born during the process of marriage from informal union tofully formal union. (16) James (1970) discusses an interesting policyinnovation along these lines, mandated in 1963 in Uduk areas of EasternSudan by the local omda, a kind of district commissioner in the'traditional' hierarchy of Native Administration. The omdaordered that marriages had to be validated by bridewealth. Marriageswere too unstable. Presumably pre��sum��a��ble?adj.That can be presumed or taken for granted; reasonable as a supposition: presumable causes of the disaster. the omda was spending much time listeningto marital disputes. Despite the very few conditions of the existingcontract, noted above, there still seems to have been plenty to fightover. By making people pay to get married, the reasoning must have beenthat men would be less willing to forfeit the 'bond' posted.James discusses how men and women rejected the policy and refused topay, or when they did pay the bridewealth would be returned some timelater. Another example concerns taxation. In many African colonies,responsibility for poll taxes fell on male 'household heads',and who their dependents were depended on marital status marital status,n the legal standing of a person in regard to his or her marriage state. . A fatherpaying tax for a daughter's marriage relieving him ofresponsibility for payment. Chanock (1985, p.172) argues that tax alsochanged divorce, since now divorce had to go through the formal legalsystem in order for husband to be relieved of responsibility forpayment. Hunt (1991) contains an extensive discussion of the taxation ofsingle women in the Belgian Congo. 5. Conclusion Marriage in Africa, as elsewhere, can be understood in part as aneconomic phenomenon. Marriages result from the intentional choices ofindividuals, and seem often to confirm to a view of persons as basicallyself-interested. The pioneering work of Becker (1981) justified theeconomic analysis of family life in general, and we have suggested thesame applies to Africa Economic analysis can and should be sued to guideand interpret anthropological fieldwork. Economic analysis offersexciting new possibilities for demographic research, and suggests thatlarge-scale surveys need to be more closely tailored to capture datarelevant to testing hypotheses and generating more appropriate stylizedfacts In social sciences, especially economics, a stylized fact is a simplified presentation of an empirical finding. While results in statistics can only be shown to be highly probable, in a stylized fact, they are presented as true. . Notes (1.) Cheung (1972) was one of the first papers first paperspl.n.The documents first filed by one applying for U.S. citizenship. to approach theeconomics of marriage. The paper is somewhat chilling in theruthlessness of its application of the principle that institutions insociety are 'efficient'. Cheung argues that in'traditional' China, men have comparative advantage infarming, and women in weaving. So the cost of 'taming' womenis lower, since they are more productive at home. So women gettransferred to men in marriage. To ensure their 'domesticity,'two practices emerged: foot-binding, and raising from childhood offuture daughters-in-law by the groom's family. (2.) Not every African society makes marriage so central. James(1970) noted that in eastern Sudan,". the Uduk practise anextremely 'free' system, in which it is individuals who makeup their minds to marry, rather than their families who arrange theliaison; and no material or legal pledges are made between families inconnection with marriage... Either the man, or the woman, may decide tobreak off the relationship at any time; there is no formaldivorce." According to James' informants, children belonged tothe matriline, and so it was untenable that legal rights to people,whether woman or potential children, could be the object of atransaction. Marriage simply acknowledged a sexual relationship, and wasaccompanied by only "a few well-defined but short-termobligations." There was no elaborate marriage ceremony. (3.) many states of the U.S. partners had exclusive rights tovoluntary sexual activity of the other (Cohen 1987 p. 271). Besteman (1995, p. 202), writing on Somalia, observes that,"Women's economic independence was thus controlled by earlymarriage and the. denial of access to land. Women's labor wascontrolled by those who held land. Prior to marriage, a woman'slabor was at the service of her father; following marriage, her laborwas at the service of her husband. Between marriages, her labor may beher own, but she usually had to exchange it for access to land or foodfrom her brothers." In the Hindu coparcenary system of much of India, male children atbirth become joint owners joint ownersnpl → copropietarios mplof the family estate. (6.) contrasts with the United States, where rights over childrenhave only recently become the dominant element in marriages; see Carbone(2000). There has been a long debate over whether this is in fact true;the problem is clouded by the fact that children as old-age security, akind of insurance contract, implies that many parents will not'need' their children. See Hoddinott (1995) for a carefulstudy. (8.) Tauxier, (1924. p. 170) described this for Bisa areas of whatis now Burkina Faso. In parallel fashion, Pere p��re?n.1. Used after a man's surname to distinguish a father from a son: Dumas p��re primarily wrote novels, while dramas occupied Dumas fils.2. (1973, p. 75) observedthat in Bisa areas if a widow refused to accept the levirate levirate:see marriage. after herhusband died, the bridewealth had to be repaid; she could refuse tomarry her husband's brother only if someone were willing to pay herbridewealth. Hakansson (1986, p. 16) describes another variant: "The Gusiipractice a form of marriage where women with only daughters can take thebridewealth received for a daughter and use it to obtain a wife for afictitious son. The children of such a wife becomes [ the payingwoman's grand-children. This form of marriage is increasing inGusii land due to the growth in the number of single mothers who see itas an alternative way of obtaining economic security and socialacceptance." (10.) See Frank (1985) and Cole, Mailath and Postlewaite (1992)."Friedman in turn builds on work of Becker (1981)and GrossbardShechtrnan (1995). Cherry (1998) is another recent analysis. (12.) Meekers and Franklin (1992) is a nice paper depicting theambivalent attitudes towards polygyny of Kaguru women in Tanzania.Shechtman Grossbard (1980) reforumulates some of Becker's worksuing simpler notation. ' See also Cronk Verb 1. cronk - utter a hoarse sound, like a ravencroaklet loose, let out, utter, emit - express audibly; utter sounds (not necessarily words); "She let out a big heavy sigh"; "He uttered strange sounds that nobody could understand"2. (1991) and Grossbard (1976). Thelatter's finding of fewer children per wife, while more wives forwealthier men, rises the interesting possibility that while women'smaximum fertility was not being attained, male fertility in given timeframe might reproductive fitness. That is, perhaps reproductive fitnessis maximized by having many children at the same time, rather than manychildren spaced over many years. 'divorce laws implies a reallocation Noun 1. reallocation - a share that has been allocated againallocation, allotment - a share set aside for a specific purpose2. reallocation of property rights of whocan decide when to terminate marriage. Under fault law, the spouse mostwanting to leave has to buy out the other. Under no-fault, the spouseleast wanting to leave has to pay the other to stay. Either way,divorces should only happen when efficient (when the sum of benefits inmarriage is less than the sum of benefits if separate) and so propertychange should have no effect on divorce rates. All no-fault does isleave women (who more often want to stay?) with lower settlements; theirhusbands no longer have to buy them off. There is a lively controversyover whether divorce patterns actually changed with changes in divorcerules (Allen 1992; Peters 1992). Another, related, controversy iswhether the switch led to different patterns of labor marketparticipation. When divorce was contested in the United States, womenhad substantial negotiating power and could get remunerated for'investment' in marriage. Under no-fault divorce, courtsdecide set tlements, and do not consider compensation for investment.More importantly, Parkman (1992) suggests, courts do not compensate forhuman capital foregone (i.e. opportunity cost, in addition toinvestment). Because of this, women, especially those with highopportunity costs Opportunity costsThe difference in the actual performance of a particular investment and some other desired investment adjusted for fixed costs and execution costs. It often refers to the most valuable alternative that is given up. to foregoing maintenance of market-oriented humancapital, have more incentives to work outside home to maintainmarketability under no-fault. Likewise, rule of no polygamy has morethan distributional consequences. With uncertainty and risk-aversionwill get similar result. Some contracts provide different kinds ofrisk-sharing and incentives than others. So just like limiting tosharecropping sharecropping,system of farm tenancy once common in some parts of the United States. In the United States the institution arose at the end of the Civil War out of the plantation system. Many planters had ample land but little money for wages. or rental or wage. (16.) Brining (1990) discusses how the elimination of breach ofpromise as an actionable tort offense in the United States encouragedthe diamond engagement ring to emerge as a commitment device. References Amadiume, Ifi. Male daughters, female husbands: gender and sex inan African society. London; Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Zed Books, 1987. Anderson, Siwan. Why Dowry Payments Declined with modernization inEurope but are Rising in India. : Center for Economic Research, 2001. Andre, C., and J. P. Plattean. "Land relations underunbearable stress: Rwanda caught in the Malthusian trap." 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