An analysis of Polygamy

Polygamy has often been pointed to as a sign of male domination over women in past times. However after careful analysis, I personally feel that polygamy is actually more disadvantageous for men than for women.

Say we have a population where the numbers of men and women are roughly equal, which is usually the case.

If one man has four wives, the logical result is that three other guys are left without a wife, as three extra women have been removed from the dating market. In my opinion, the marginal benefit that the first guy receives from gaining three extra wives is less than the marginal benefit the other three fellows lose from going from one wife to zero.

From this example, we can see that in a polygamous society, the distribution of "wive share" among men is more uneven than the distribution of "husband share" among women.

E.g. a society of 10 men and 10 women. 1 guy has 4 wives, another 2 have 2 wives each, and there are two more couples of 1 to 1.

So the first guy has 4 points, another 2 have 2 points each, another 2 have 1 point each, another 5 have 0.

The 4 women have 1/4 points, another 4 have 1/2 points each, another 2 have 1 point each.

So we can see that the distribution for women is more even. This leads to greater happiness for women compared to men. To draw an analogy from economics, the higher the Gini coefficient of a nation is, the worse off it is supposed to be as opposed to be a country which has similar income levels but a lower Gini coefficient.

*A higher Gini coefficient shows that the inequality in income is higher.

Therefore, I conclude that polygamy hurts men more than it hurts women. It is actually a system where men oppress other men.