Matthew Effect, Pareto Principle, and Polygyny

[MemeFan]

Society where at least 60% of men can't reproduce because they can't have sex is impossible. Sexless men don't have any stake in such society. Expect rebellion and general destabillisation.

Even in best case maximum 15% can have at least 2 wives. Otherwise society wouldn't work.
Society can only work when most people can expect mutual beneficial cooperation and fullfilment of all essential needs.

 

[FollowingHim]

Interesting idea. Not sure if that specific data is available, but we can see how many marriages are polygynous:

"the Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) data show, 11, 27, and 53% of marriages in Zimbabwe, Ivory Coast, and Guinea were polygynous respectively"
"Another DHS reported that polygyny represents 25% of all marriages in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), 47% in Sierra Leone, and 53% in The Gambia." (Source)

There are countries where over 50% of marriages are polygynous.

I am looking for more data along those lines.

You need to remember that there is not a 1:1 ratio of men to women, especially when there is an age discrepancy between spouses, so just because 50% of marriages in a certain society are polygamous, it does not follow that a large number of men miss out and are single. Basically, if the population is expanding and each generation is larger than the previous one, and older men marry younger women, there are more women seeking marriage than men seeking marriage at any point in time. Surprisingly, a lot more. On top of the obvious fact that in dangerous environments like poor countries men die off at a faster rate than women due to work hazards.

We had a detailed statistical look at this phenomenon some years ago.

So you can have 50% of marriages being polygamous - and at the same time the vast majority of men can still have wives.

 

[Keith Martin]

You need to remember that there is not a 1:1 ratio of men to women, especially when there is an age discrepancy between spouses, so just because 50% of marriages in a certain society are polygamous, it does not follow that a large number of men miss out and are single. Basically, if the population is expanding and each generation is larger than the previous one, and older men marry younger women, there are more women seeking marriage than men seeking marriage at any point in time. Surprisingly, a lot more. On top of the obvious fact that in dangerous environments like poor countries men die off at a faster rate than women due to work hazards.

We had a detailed statistical look at this phenomenon some years ago.

So you can have 50% of marriages being polygamous - and at the same time the vast majority of men can still have wives.

Not so, not if vast majority means what it usually does and not if every woman isn't willing to get married. The numbers just don't work.

If 80% of men want to be married or the equivalent of being married, and 50% of the married men (40% of all men) even just have two wives, and assuming that there are 10% more adult females (because you can't mix apples and oranges by talking about total marriages on the one hand and unmarried-disparity statistics on the other), then 80% of the remaining 110% of women will be taken up by them, leaving only 30/110 of women available for the remaining 40% of men -- and that assumes all women would be willing to be married. Can't happen.

But I think you've missed @NS4Liberty's most salient point:

Sexless men don't have any stake in such society. Expect rebellion and general destabillisation.

I actually think these kinds of things would work themselves over the sexual marketplace, but we do have evidence of instances in which certain men have had enough power to demand for themselves far greater numbers of wives than they could have acquired without coercive power (one of the latest examples of this is Warren Jeffs). The expected results for the leftover men should be exactly what we have seen in the past -- absent totalitarian control such as exists in China, where men line up every day just for the slim chance of getting in to have a session with a prostitute -- rebellion and destabilization. Some of the violence in our inner cities can be attributed to this perceived underlying state of affairs among male ghetto youth.

 

[Bartato]

You need to remember that there is not a 1:1 ratio of men to women, especially when there is an age discrepancy between spouses, so just because 50% of marriages in a certain society are polygamous, it does not follow that a large number of men miss out and are single. Basically, if the population is expanding and each generation is larger than the previous one, and older men marry younger women, there are more women seeking marriage than men seeking marriage at any point in time. Surprisingly, a lot more. On top of the obvious fact that in dangerous environments like poor countries men die off at a faster rate than women due to work hazards.

We had a detailed statistical look at this phenomenon some years ago.

So you can have 50% of marriages being polygamous - and at the same time the vast majority of men can still have wives.

The math doesn't seem to add up. I do see what you are saying about the expanding population and men marrying younger women. That is one factor, but not a huge one.

Apart from massive numbers of men dying in war or something else very dramatic, the majority of men can't be polygamists.

 

[steve]

Not so, not if vast majority means what it usually does and not if every woman isn't willing to get married. The numbers just don't work.

If 80% of men want to be married or the equivalent of being married, and 50% of the married men (40% of all men) even just have two wives, and assuming that there are 10% more adult females (because you can't mix apples and oranges by talking about total marriages on the one hand and unmarried-disparity statistics on the other), then 80% of the remaining 110% of women will be taken up by them, leaving only 30/110 of women available for the remaining 40% of men -- and that assumes all women would be willing to be married. Can't happen.

But I think you've missed @NS4Liberty's most salient point:

I actually think these kinds of things would work themselves over the sexual marketplace, but we do have evidence of instances in which certain men have had enough power to demand for themselves far greater numbers of wives than they could have acquired without coercive power (one of the latest examples of this is Warren Jeffs). The expected results for the leftover men should be exactly what we have seen in the past -- absent totalitarian control such as exists in China, where men line up every day just for the slim chance of getting in to have a session with a prostitute -- rebellion and destabilization. Some of the violence in our inner cities can be attributed to this perceived underlying state of affairs among male ghetto youth.

Yeah, but if they can just transgender all the kids…..
We may wind up with a bunch of young ladies without boobs after they drop the stupidity, but the boys with the dickectemy will be out of the game.

 

[FollowingHim]

Not so, not if vast majority means what it usually does and not if every woman isn't willing to get married. The numbers just don't work.

You are ignoring my point about marriage age discrepancy, so the rest of your comments are based on a false premise.

The math doesn't seem to add up. I do see what you are saying about the expanding population and men marrying younger women. That is one factor, but not a huge one.

And @Bartato, I don't think you appreciate how large a factor this is. In the post I linked to, I demonstrated that in a poor country with a growing population (which is the case for the examples given above where there are high rates of polygamy), using Uganda as an example, an average age discrepancy of only four years gave a ratio of 1.25 women per man. Seven years gives almost 1.5 women per man. This is a massive factor in such countries, and we will misinterpret all the aforementioned statistics if we neglect it.

Interesting idea. Not sure if that specific data is available, but we can see how many marriages are polygynous:

"the Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) data show, 11, 27, and 53% of marriages in Zimbabwe, Ivory Coast, and Guinea were polygynous respectively"
"Another DHS reported that polygyny represents 25% of all marriages in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), 47% in Sierra Leone, and 53% in The Gambia." (Source)

There are countries where over 50% of marriages are polygynous.

I am looking for more data along those lines.

 

[Keith Martin]

You are ignoring my point about marriage age discrepancy, so the rest of your comments are based on a false premise.

And @Bartato, I don't think you appreciate how large a factor this is. In the post I linked to, I demonstrated that in a poor country with a growing population (which is the case for the examples given above where there are high rates of polygamy), using Uganda as an example, an average age discrepancy of only four years gave a ratio of 1.25 women per man. Seven years gives almost 1.5 women per man. This is a massive factor in such countries, and we will misinterpret all the aforementioned statistics if we neglect it.

Age discrepancy would only exacerbate the problem of frustrating young men, as they'd be watching all their near-age women being snatched up by older men and being expected to just wait around for decades to do anything other than wait in line for increasingly-expensive hookers.

I suppose we could reinstitute the cult prostitutes, though, right? . . .

 

[Bartato]

You are ignoring my point about marriage age discrepancy, so the rest of your comments are based on a false premise.

And @Bartato, I don't think you appreciate how large a factor this is. In the post I linked to, I demonstrated that in a poor country with a growing population (which is the case for the examples given above where there are high rates of polygamy), using Uganda as an example, an average age discrepancy of only four years gave a ratio of 1.25 women per man. Seven years gives almost 1.5 women per man. This is a massive factor in such countries, and we will misinterpret all the aforementioned statistics if we neglect it.

Got it

 

[Bartato]

Age discrepancy would only exacerbate the problem of frustrating young men, as they'd be watching all their near-age women being snatched up by older men and being expected to just wait around for decades to do anything other than wait in line for increasingly-expensive hookers.

I suppose we could reinstitute the cult prostitutes, though, right? . . .

Wife pyramid scheme

 

[FollowingHim]

The largest polygamous marriage percentages given by @NS4Liberty are 53% in Gambia and Guinea. According to Pew Research, Gambia and Guinea just happen to have the two highest average age discrepancies between spouses in the world - 14.5 and 13.5 years respectively. That will be no coincidence - the rate of polygamy is directly connected to the age disparity.

I reran the code from my previous post to calculate the ratio of males to females assuming a 14 year age discrepancy, for both Gambia and Guinea, using 2020 demographic data. This gave:
Gambia: 1.58 women per man
Guinea: 1.57 women per man

So based on that ratio, let's pretend the total population of Gambia seeking marriage in a particular year is 100 men and 158 women.
If 53% of marriages were polygamous (ie 53% of women are in a polygamous marriage), then out of every 158 women, 84 are in a polygamous marriage. If there were an average of 2.2 women per polygamous man, those 84 women are married to 38 men.
So out of every 100 men, 38 are polygamous.
That leaves 62 men (100 - 38), and 74 women (158 - 84).
Not only can every one of these men marry, even if they all married one woman each, there would STILL be women left unmarried.

No man is being left without a wife solely because of even that very high rate of polygamy - because it occurs within a particular demographic context which probably causes the polygamy in the first place.

 

[FollowingHim]

We must always keep marriage age disparity in mind whenever considering such statistics. The numbers don't make sense until we include the age disparity in our consideration - then suddenly it all clicks into place.

As @Keith Martin pointed out earlier, 53% polygamy really doesn't add up at a 1:1 ratio. Again with 2.2 women per polygamous man, and a 1:1 ratio, out of every 100 men that would leave us with:
24 polygamous men (married to 53 women)
47 monogamous men (married to 47 women)
29 single men. No single women.
Which is a very unfair and thus quite unlikely distribution - it would result in too much social unrest from those sexually frustrated men, and no amount of fiddling with the assumptions can turn it into anything remotely plausible. It sounds terrible and gives us a completely false understanding of the social reality.

But take the age discrepancy into account, and suddenly (from my above figures) you end up with:
38 polygamous men (married to 84 women)
62 monogamous men (married to 62 women)
No single men. 12 single women.
Which is much more realistic and makes all the published statistics fit together neatly. You can fiddle with the assumptions (e.g. the mean number of women per polygamous man) to adjust the detail slightly but the overall conclusion remains plausible.

And this really is an extreme situation. Countries with lower age discrepancies have much lower rates of polygamy.

 

[frederick]

In all this, the majority of men in modern Western society are not the godly patriarchal type wanting permanent multiple wives. Most are more like Hunter Biden and don't care about how or who they get their jollies with.

In Christian circles God has given more women seeking marriage than godly men available for monogamy-only to fulfill. It's the monogamy-only culture that's wrecked it for everyone.

 

[Keith Martin]

The largest polygamous marriage percentages given by @NS4Liberty are 53% in Gambia and Guinea. According to Pew Research, Gambia and Guinea just happen to have the two highest average age discrepancies between spouses in the world - 14.5 and 13.5 years respectively. That will be no coincidence - the rate of polygamy is directly connected to the age disparity.

I reran the code from my previous post to calculate the ratio of males to females assuming a 14 year age discrepancy, for both Gambia and Guinea, using 2020 demographic data. This gave:
Gambia: 1.58 women per man
Guinea: 1.57 women per man

So based on that ratio, let's pretend the total population of Gambia seeking marriage in a particular year is 100 men and 158 women.
If 53% of marriages were polygamous (ie 53% of women are in a polygamous marriage), then out of every 158 women, 84 are in a polygamous marriage. If there were an average of 2.2 women per polygamous man, those 84 women are married to 38 men.
So out of every 100 men, 38 are polygamous.
That leaves 62 men (100 - 38), and 74 women (158 - 84).
Not only can every one of these men marry, even if they all married one woman each, there would STILL be women left unmarried.

No man is being left without a wife solely because of even that very high rate of polygamy - because it occurs within a particular demographic context which probably causes the polygamy in the first place.

Which also confirms what I wrote earlier about 2/3 being the maximum percentage of the people being married to reach a 53% polygynous marriage percentage. Your analysis, though, that every other man, including married and unmarried, would still have the opportunity to marry a woman smacks of disconnected idealism, whereas @NS4Liberty leans more towards what would be realistic. We can't look at either Gambia or Guinea as paragons of societal stability. Your analysis also assumes that pairing off could possibly sustain itself right down to nearly the last man. Instead, in a culture that has fostered a 53% polygynous marriage rate, it's extremely unlikely that none of the remaining unmarried women would choose to be in plural marriages were they to marry; in fact, of the distributions of potential percentages, the best prediction would be to assert that something close to what already exists as a pattern in the culture would persist as the final leftover males and females formed relationships. That means that around half the additional marriages would likely be polygynous, and at that rate the women would get used up with 13% of the men being shut out from marriage. In one sense, those men may lack much motivation for marriage, but that can only be assumed if pairing up proceeds smoothly all the way to the end of the women.

What I also find disturbing is that adding in this marriage-age-discrepancy differential predominantly ignores what widows are supposed to do to get covered during the average 20+ final years of their lives. It provides further justification for men who want to limit their polygyny to young, childless new partners who aren't in anywhere near the average amount of risk of being left uncovered.

Therefore, we're still stuck with a situation in which the leftovers are 15-20% of the least desirable younger men and the majority of elderly widows.

Sometimes what is possible doesn't equate it with being truly loving.

 

[FollowingHim]

To further test the assumption that age discrepancy and polygamy are directly and causatively linked (one way or the other), the next-largest age discrepancy according to Pew Research is Mali, at 12.9 years. In Mali 44% of women were in polygamous marriages in 1996 (an old number but the best I could find). That directly confirms the assumption that age discrepancy and polygamy are linked.

Which also confirms what I wrote earlier about 2/3 being the maximum percentage of the people being married to reach a 53% polygynous marriage percentage. Your analysis, though, that every other man, including married and unmarried, would still have the opportunity to marry a woman smacks of disconnected idealism, whereas @NS4Liberty leans more towards what would be realistic. We can't look at either Gambia or Guinea as paragons of societal stability. Your analysis also assumes that pairing off could possibly sustain itself right down to nearly the last man. Instead, in a culture that has fostered a 53% polygynous marriage rate, it's extremely unlikely that none of the remaining unmarried women would choose to be in plural marriages were they to marry; in fact, of the distributions of potential percentages, the best prediction would be to assert that something close to what already exists as a pattern in the culture would persist as the final leftover males and females formed relationships. That means that around half the additional marriages would likely be polygynous, and at that rate the women would get used up with 13% of the men being shut out from marriage. In one sense, those men may lack much motivation for marriage, but that can only be assumed if pairing up proceeds smoothly all the way to the end of the women.

What I also find disturbing is that adding in this marriage-age-discrepancy differential predominantly ignores what widows are supposed to do to get covered during the average 20+ final years of their lives. It provides further justification for men who want to limit their polygyny to young, childless new partners who aren't in anywhere near the average amount of risk of being left uncovered.

Therefore, we're still stuck with a situation in which the leftovers are 15-20% of the least desirable younger men and the majority of elderly widows.

Sometimes what is possible doesn't equate it with being truly loving.

You are misunderstanding the statistics and adding to them with just-so stories. The statistic of 53% polygamy is not the number who marry one year (I did use that terminology in my simplified example with 100 people purely as an illustrative tool, but it's not the statistic). 53% is the total, final proportion of women who end up in polygamous marriages, after all of the marriages occur. It is not a starting point to add further hypothesising about what the remaining men and women might do, it is the endpoint. Your hypothesising that "half the additional marriages would be polygamous" and "13% of the men" shut out from marriage is purely based on a misreading of the data - this is simply not how the numbers work. All the remainder of your comment is based on these false assumptions.

Based on the actual numbers, after all polygamous marriages have been entered into, there is still an excess number of females to males (see my analysis above). Now, obviously a small number of those males will remain single even though women are statistically available, some of the women will become prostitutes, we can make some assumptions about the detail. But they don't change the overall conclusions.

 

[FollowingHim]

We can't look at either Gambia or Guinea as paragons of societal stability. ... Sometimes what is possible doesn't equate it with being truly loving.

I am dispassionately explaining real-world statistics. I am not attaching any moral judgement or recommendation to those statistics.

 

[Joleneakamama]

I'm sympathetic to the leftover men in fundy Mormon communities. These might not see it as a blessing to be forced out from under that bogus and warped authority structure and kicked out into the wider world, but for many of them and their children it sure could be.
The age discrepancy is just one factor that goes into the thing we call marriage that in the western world looks like musical chairs...with the chairs and people ditching each other!
One factor that a Russian priest mentioned impacting and destroying marriage/stable families there is how easy the modern women are. Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?
We see the effect of this and other social trends for many years. The fallout continues.

I'm older then my hubby by almost a year, his new wife is 22 years younger then him. Do we feel bad for the single men we know that are closer to her age? Maybe a bit. Should it change anyone's decision? No way!

We are doing our part to raise our sons and daughters with a YHWH honoring view of life. Teaching them how backward the world's propaganda really is. With twice as many sons as daughters in our family....another chance to keep raising good moral young people is an amazing gift.

Anyone can choose to change. Yah honors those who honor Him. Hopefully young men who want marriage and families will be inspired to work toward the life they want. I am sure YHWH wants good things for His children.....but He also said how to get them.

Seek ye first.....

So value what He values. Build up the right kind of treasure. Get your heart calibrated to kingdom of heaven currency. Sow seeds of love and kindness. Be thankful for what He's already given you.

He knows the desires of our hearts. He knows how to give good gifts.

Gotta run. Work day!

 

[steve]

I don’t believe that the future is going to resemble the present, the present doesn’t resemble what life was like 50 years ago, in greater society.
Polygyny cannot and will not overwhelm society in the next 50 years. I don’t see any mechanism for that.
So why should we concern ourselves about the numbers and percentages? Whatever we guess about what could happen probably won’t.

I could solve my consternation by avoiding this thread, but I won’t.

 

[NS4Liberty]

I found this article, but unfortunately my ability to translate the data for myself is lacking. The summary is as follows:
"However, even when polygyny is both legally and socially acceptable, there are mathematical limits to its prevalence. Figures 2 and 3 suggest that, in the long run, polygyny by more than 20 percent of husbands and 30 percent of wives is on the high end of what is mathematically plausible, unless the difference in marriageable ages is very large."

https://wchsutah.org/miscellaneous/polygamy4.pdf

 

[frederick]

I don’t believe that the future is going to resemble the present, the present doesn’t resemble what life was like 50 years ago, in greater society.

I totally agree @steve, and the speed of change is accelerating and it's not for the good.

Those who have committed relationships, and who raise their kids to be descent, moral, hardworking people are going to become more of the exception than the rule.

 

[NickF]

I don’t believe that the future is going to resemble the present, the present doesn’t resemble what life was like 50 years ago, in greater society.
Polygyny cannot and will not overwhelm society in the next 50 years. I don’t see any mechanism for that.
So why should we concern ourselves about the numbers and percentages? Whatever we guess about what could happen probably won’t.

I could solve my consternation by avoiding this thread, but I won’t.

My thoughts perzackly