Polygynous Contexts, Family Structure, and Infant Mortality in Sub-Saharan Africa

Smith‐Greenaway, Emily; Trinitapoli, Jenny

doi:10.1007/s13524-013-0262-9

Cited by 71 publications

(64 citation statements)

References 52 publications

(95 reference statements)

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“…Consistent with prior studies (4)(5)(6)(7)(8), polygyny is predictive of relatively low food security and poor child health in aggregated data. However, such associations are driven entirely by the tendency of polygyny to be more common in marginalized and ecologically vulnerable villages and ethnic groups.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 85%

“…Findings are mixed, study sites are rarely regionally or nationally representative, and small sample sizes raise issues of statistical power. Given these problems, the consistency of findings presented in recent large-scale, representatively sampled demographic studies of polygyny and child health is seductive (4)(5)(6)(7)(8). However, as we will argue, studies relying on highly aggregated data bring their own, often overlooked, methodological problems (27), problems that are acute when contrasting polygynous and monogamous households, in part because the former tend to be most common in remote and/or marginalized groups facing numerous socioecological barriers to health (SI Text).…”

Section: Significancementioning

confidence: 99%

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No evidence that polygynous marriage is a harmful cultural practice in northern Tanzania

Lawson

James²,

Ngadaya

et al. 2015

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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Polygyny is cross-culturally common and a topic of considerable academic and policy interest, often deemed a harmful cultural practice serving the interests of men contrary to those of women and children. Supporting this view, large-scale studies of national African demographic surveys consistently demonstrate that poor child health outcomes are concentrated in polygynous households. Negative population-level associations between polygyny and well-being have also been reported, consistent with the hypothesis that modern transitions to socially imposed monogamy are driven by cultural group selection. We challenge the consensus view that polygyny is harmful, drawing on multilevel data from 56 ethnically diverse Tanzanian villages. We first demonstrate the vulnerability of aggregated data to confounding between ecological and individual determinants of health; while across villages polygyny is associated with poor child health and low food security, such relationships are absent or reversed within villages, particularly when children and fathers are coresident. We then provide data indicating that the costs of sharing a husband are offset by greater wealth (land and livestock) of polygynous households. These results are consistent with models of polygyny based on female choice. Finally, we show that village-level negative associations between polygyny prevalence, food security, and child health are fully accounted for by underlying differences in ecological vulnerability (rainfall) and socioeconomic marginalization (access to education). We highlight the need for improved, culturally sensitive measurement tools and appropriate scales of analysis in studies of polygyny and other purportedly harmful practices and discuss the relevance of our results to theoretical accounts of marriage and contemporary population policy.evolutionary anthropology | public health | family structure | child health | food security R ecent years have witnessed growing recognition of the importance of gender in all aspects of international development (1). This shift includes domestic and international efforts to abolish so-called "harmful cultural practices," a term used to describe practices of, typically nonwestern, cultures deemed detrimental to well-being, most often with regard to women and children (SI Text). Most attention has focused on female genital cutting and on child and forced marriage (2, 3). In many policyorientated texts, this label is also given to polygynous marriage (hereafter polygyny). For example, the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women states that polygyny "contravene[s] a woman's right to equality with men and can have such serious emotional and financial consequences for her and her dependents that such marriages ought to be discouraged and prohibited" (2). Such statements are frequently presented as stylized facts and made without discussion of supporting evidence. However, a recent spate of articles, mostly based on large-scale African Demographic and Health ...

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 85%

Section: Significancementioning

confidence: 99%

No evidence that polygynous marriage is a harmful cultural practice in northern Tanzania

Lawson

James²,

Ngadaya

et al. 2015

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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“…This concern is acute with respect to analyses of polygyny because the practice is often most common in marginalized locations and ethnic groups that have benefited relatively little from socioeconomic development. As such, apparent negative effects of polygyny in DHS studies may be an artifact of confounding between marriage system and related socioecological determinants of child health (Lawson et al 2015;Smith-Greenaway and Trinitapoli 2014;Arthi and Fenkse 2018).…”

Section: Ecological Confounding In Large-scale Studiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Polygynous marriage and child health in sub-Saharan Africa: What is the evidence for harm?

Lawson¹,

Gibson²

2018

DemRes

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“…The first two pairs of stratified models respectively compare climate effects between male and female children (Model 2), and between low-(1-4) and high birth-order (5+) children (Model 3). The associations between temperature, precipitation, and weight may vary by children's sex or birth order if parents discriminate between male and female children, or before early-and later-born children, in the measures they take to protect children from the adverse effects of climatic variability (e.g., allocation of food, clean water) or in their responses to these effects (e.g., investments in health care, Block et al 2004;Smith-Greenaway & Trinitapoli 2014;Tiwari et al 2017). 10 Our results suggest such practices are not widespread across our sample, as between-sex and -birth order differences in temperature and precipitation effects are not statistically significant.…”

Section: Heterogeneous Effectsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Climate Variability and Child Nutrition: Findings from Sub-Saharan Africa

Thiede¹,

Strube²

2019

Preprint

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Climatic variability has been shown to affect many underlying determinants of child malnutrition, including food availability, access, and utilization. Evidence of the effects of changing temperatures and precipitation on children’s nutritional status nonetheless remains limited. Research addressing this knowledge gap is merited given the short- and long-run consequences of malnutrition. We contribute to the literature on this issue by estimating the effects of temperature and precipitation anomalies on the weight of children ages 0-59 months across 16 countries in sub-Saharan Africa. Results from fixed-effects linear regression models show that precipitation anomalies have significant and non-linear effects on child weight, with sharp increases in thinness under dry conditions and minimal benefits to above-average precipitation. The negative effects of dry spells on acute malnutrition are significantly amplified by concurrent exposure to above-average temperatures. Tests for differences in the effects of climatic variability across sub-populations show statistically significant differences according to maternal education and children’s residence in rural or urban areas. Substantively, however, these differences are a matter of degree rather than kind. Our results underscore the vulnerability of young children to climatic variability and its second-order economic and epidemiological effects. The study also highlights the corresponding need to design and assess interventions to effectively mitigate these impacts.

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Polygynous Contexts, Family Structure, and Infant Mortality in Sub-Saharan Africa

Cited by 71 publications

References 52 publications

No evidence that polygynous marriage is a harmful cultural practice in northern Tanzania

No evidence that polygynous marriage is a harmful cultural practice in northern Tanzania

Polygynous marriage and child health in sub-Saharan Africa: What is the evidence for harm?

Climate Variability and Child Nutrition: Findings from Sub-Saharan Africa

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