“In fact, statistically, in societies without monogamy, there is actually slightly more opportunity for the bride and groom to either choose or have the right to refuse matches. Firstly, she says it’s not true that women in polygamous societies have no say in marriage choices. Stepping back from the economics of this debate, Adshade also argues that polygyny doesn’t inherently endanger the welfare of women and children. You can argue that the change to a monogamous society makes them better off but while it does so it makes the wives of the wealthy men worse off, so that change cannot meet the criterion for Pareto efficiency.” In other words, the shift from polygyny to monogamy would make women worse off, so the most economically sound policy would be to allow it to continue. “In polygynous societies with individual choice the truly disadvantaged are the poorer men who end up with no wives or families of their own. If there was a system of monogamy she might have accepted his offer because that alternative was no longer available. He had that offer refused though because she had a more appealing alternative. He made a marriage offer to the woman and, since he is acting in his own best interest, if she had accepted the offer he would have been better off than he is without her. “The person in this story who benefits from the change from polygyny to monogamy though is the poor man who with the current system has no wife. We know this because she could have accepted his offer in the first place and chose not to. A change in marriage systems that forces her to be the only wife of the poor man necessarily makes her worse off. If she accepts the offer of the rich man over the poor man, and since she is acting in her own best interest, then she must prefer polygyny over monogamy. Say she receives two offers of marriage, one from a man who has plenty of resources and already has one wife (so that she will be wife number two) and a second from a man who has little resources and has no wives (so she will be the one and only wife). Consider the following scenario: “A man makes a woman an offer of marriage and part of that offer is in terms of the standard of living of her and the children they will have together in the future.
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