The Risk of Polygamy and Wives' Saving Behavior

Marie Boltz and Isabelle Chort

No DT/2015/12, Working Papers from DIAL (Développement, Institutions et Mondialisation)

Abstract: In a polygamous society, all monogamous women are potentially at risk of polygamy. However, both the anthropological and economic literatures are silent on the potential impact of the risk of polygamy on economic decisions of monogamous wives. We explore this issue for Senegal using individual panel data. We rst estimate a Cox model for the probability of transition to polygamy. Second, we estimate the impact of the predicted risk of polygamy on monogamous wives' savings. We nd a positive impact of the risk of polygamy on female savings entrusted to formal or informal institutions, suggestive of self-protective strategies. This increase in savings comes at the cost of reduced consumption, both in terms of household food expenditures and wives' private non-food expenses.

Keywords: Polygamy; savings; intra-household resource allocation; consumption; survival analysis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D13 D14 J12 O12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 50 pages
Date: 2015-07
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

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Related works:
Journal Article: The Risk of Polygamy and Wives’ Saving Behavior (2019)
Working Paper: The Risk of Polygamy and Wives’ Saving Behavior (2019)
Working Paper: The Risk of Polygamy and Wives’ Saving Behavior (2019)
Working Paper: The Risk of Polygamy and Wives' Saving Behaviour (2015)
Working Paper: The Risk of Polygamy and Wives Saving Behavior (2015)
Working Paper: The Risk of Polygamy and Wives Saving Behavior (2015)
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