ABSTRACT
Recent evidence indicates that polygyny continues to be practiced in most parts of Africa without any significantly noticeable change in its incidence over time; in fact, in some cases, the incidence of polygyny appears to have increased. However, except for the study of Crossbard (1976) and a rather descriptive but interesting survey by Boserup (1974) of some earlier work, the explanations offered for the practice of polygyny in the African setting are mostly in terms of cultural and traditional factors including men's attitudes toward women and the father's desire to perpetuate, through children, his and the family name and prestige (Fuller 1959; Messenger 1959; Schneider 1959; Ohenburg 1959; Wolfe 1959; Lystad 1959; and Dorjahn 1959). Such explanations, although valuable, fail to recognize that social and marital institutions reflect rational decisions about economic welfare, and that there are important economic factors that determine family decisions. Scarcity of cross-sectional household data, among other things, has prevented any detailed economic analysis of household decisions with respect to polygynous marriages and, hence, our understanding of the economic determinants of family marriage decisions in the polygynous societies of Africa remains limited.
