[RyanRies]

How do we know which one is the cause and which one is the effect? Or that it's not just yet another case of correlation mistaken for causation? Do more intense levels of gender inequality lead to polygamous marriage, or does polygamous marriage lead to more intense levels of gender inequality?

[beccasanchez]

It has nothing to do with gender equality. It has to do with economic inequality between males.

Economic inequality between males means more and more women are competing for a smaller supply of wealthy males.

Increased demand for top males leads to gender inequality as more and more women compete for a smaller pool of rich men, reducing the bargaining power of every individual woman and increasing the bargaining power of the few males who are marriage material.

Increased demand for top males leads to polygamy and other polygamous arrangements such as mistresses.

[analyst74]

It's not just inequality between males, but also the wellness of poor people.

If people worry less about starvation, they will put less emphasis on potential partner's financial status.

[s_dev]

That doesn't explain polygamy in the richer parts of the Middle East where it's far more common than Western Europe. Starvation or even significant malnourishment beyond ones own poor choices aren't common. Relative economic inequality is common though to both places.

[marknutter]

> Economic inequality between males means more and more women are competing for a smaller supply of wealthy males. Increased demand for top males leads to gender inequality as more and more women compete for a smaller pool of rich men, reducing the bargaining power of every individual woman and increasing the bargaining power of the few males who are marriage material.

I don't see how any of this holds up in today's society where women are earning just as much as men, and in some relationships, more.

[Lawtonfogle]

A woman making 10K and a woman making 100K will both face social pressure against dating a guy making 80% of what they do, since the pressure is about the relevant income and not the total income. So this means that the more women make, the bigger this problem becomes because it drives up what is considered a rich enough guy, even if there wasn't the other problem of the wealth gap growing.

[beccasanchez]

Rape is illegal. Since males can't force females to procreate, female choice is the deciding agent in determining who mates with who. Females choose mates based on their genetic fitness and their ability to provide resources. Genetic fitness is determined by all of: a male's ability to acquire resources (wealth), his looks (square jaw), talents (guitar player), personality (funny), social status (fame/popularity).

If a female no longer requires resource provision because she is earning enough money, she will prioritize genetic fitness in her mate selection, and so will be MORE willing to engage in a polygamous arrangement because polygamy can get her access to a greater diversity and quality of genetic material. Monogamy is only necessary for the female if it will provide her with resources or protection. Monogamy is not necessary for her to get access to sperm--sperm is cheap. She doesn't worry about money and can instead get the best genetic material without the best resources.

Therefore, female wealth drives polygamy.

But male economic inequality also drives polygamy.

Both factors increase polygamy. The only way to reverse these pressures would be to legalize rape and return to a state of nature. This would dethrone female agency as the factor that determines who will reproduce with who, and would elevate male violence to the deciding factor.

[jerf]

"I don't see how any of this holds up in today's society where women are earning just as much as men, and in some relationships, more."

A lot of this study isn't about "today's society". Also notice the last paragraph: "Monogamous marriage has largely preceded democracy and voting rights for women in the nations where it has been institutionalized, says Henrich, the Canadian Research Chair in Culture, Cognition and Evolution in UBC’s Depts. of Psychology and Economics. By decreasing competition for younger and younger brides, monogamous marriage increases the age of first marriage for females, decreases the spousal age gap and elevates female influence in household decisions which decreases total fertility and increases gender equality."

[beccasanchez]

The best recipe for monogamy is clear:

* Keep rape illegal

* Reduce male economic inequality

* Reduce female personal wealth

Since rape would still be illegal, female desire would still be the agent that determines reproduction and mating. But since females have no personal property, they would have to acquire resources by accessing a male's resources. Since males are all roughly equal, she will prefer to find a male who does not provide resources to other females.

Voila! Monogamy.

[angmarsbane]

This assumes the females are completely dependent on the wealth of the males and I think this is less common than it has been in the past. Take the economic dependency out of the equation and female choice is much broader.

I think also, if wealth was the most important factor wouldn't it make sense for one female to have multiple male partners contributing? That would reduce the need to compete for 1 economically strong partner.

[dozzie]

Or neither, because both are results of an underlying cause?

[carsongross]

Reduced male fighting over mates, males having relative certainty over paternity and, therefore, increased genetic interest in participating in the raising of children turns out to be useful for building a civilization.

The causality is obvious, given a bit of reflection.

[danharaj]

> increased genetic interest

This only makes sense if you think the individual is the primary site of selection pressure. It need not be. In fact, it probably isn't. Genes compete and cooperate with each other across populations. An example of selection pressure that is supported beyond the interest of one individual's reproductive success is the gay uncle hypothesis: Kin selection means that genes that favor a group's reproduction while dooming an individual member's chances can be successful.

In a social species like Homo Sapiens it is far too naive to examine fitness at the level of individuals. Our fitness is a function on ensembles of human beings, not just individuals. How the fitness of an individual and the groups they belong to are related is deep and fascinating.

Cooperation and collectivism are as much our essence as competition and individualism. There is no dichotomy between them. We are related to both Chimpanzees and Bonobos.

Anyway, this relates to your reasoning in this way: A group of human beings who freely procreate with each other and maximizing paternal uncertainty maximize their mutual interest. Such a reproductive strategy strongly selects for behaviors that maximize group cohesion and mutuality.

If we assume a reproductive strategy, the set of behaviors and their underlying genetics gain fitness relative to that reproductive strategy. A reproductive strategy that emphasizes the propagation of individual's genes specifically works well with genes that favor individualistic behavior while a reproductive strategy that emphasizes the propagation of a coherent population's genes works well with genes that favor collectivist behavior.

The converse implication holds as well. The population of human beings and the genes that are distributed amongst it are not driven by one master impulse, but instead ebb and flow according to external and purely human pressures. If a dictatorship arose tomorrow and instituted collective breeding, that would be quite a tumultuous change in pressures for individualism and against collectivism. Human nature is in a non-linear feedback loop.

Take a coherent set of behaviors and the genes that support them. Take another set that are at odds with those behaviors. You can ask how those evolve as if they were competing as organisms. There are no clean lines drawn in biology. Genes propagate and evolve, organisms propagate and evolve, populations of organisms propagate and evolve, ecosystems propagate and evolve, behaviors propagate and evolve.

So what I'm trying to say in a long-winded way is that your focus on individual interest is much too narrow and misses the forest for the trees.

[carsongross]

While that is certainly a mitigating factor, individual genetic interest is still a large component in male investment in children.

European-style civilization is probably not possible without it, as I expect we will soon learn.