The Intra-household Economics of Polygyny: Fertility and Child Mortality in Rural Mali

Harounan Kazianga and Stefan Klonner

No 902, Economics Working Paper Series from Oklahoma State University, Department of Economics and Legal Studies in Business

Abstract: Building on anthropological evidence, we develop a model of intra-household decision making on fertility and child survival within the framework of the collective household model. We carry out a test of the implications of this framework with data from Demographic and Health Surveys in rural Mali, where polygyny rates among married women are close to 50 per cent. The econometric tests reject the implications of efficient intra-household allocations for junior wives in bigynous households and fail to reject for senior wives in bigynous households as well as for wives in monogamous households. These findings are consistent with existing narrative evidence according to which co-wife rivalry is responsible for resource-consuming struggle and junior wives are the adults with the weakest bargaining position in the household.

Keywords: intrahousehold models; polygyny; child mortality; fertility; Mali (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D13 I12 J13 O15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 33 pages
Date: 2009
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (12)

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Working Paper: The Intra-household Economics of Polygyny: Fertility and Child Mortality in Rural Mali (2009)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:okl:wpaper:0902

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