Polygamy and education in Africa: an unusual couple

Polygamy is a matrimonial regime that allows people to enter into several legitimate unions. There are two forms: polygyny, where a man has several wives, and polyandry, where a woman has several husbands.The second situation being rare, polygamy commonly indicates the case of a man with multiple female companions.

Although polygamy now affects only 2% of the world's population, according to the Pew Research Center, it was much more common in the middle of the last century. Today, it is mainly found in rural areas of West and Central Africa. In France, it has officially been banned since 24 August 1993.

After the Second World War in Cameroon, the colonial government opened numerous schools, providing mass education for many young people, particularly girls. In economics, however, the causal link between education and a reduction in polygamy has never been demonstrated. In their study, "Education and polygamy: Evidence from Cameroon", published in the Journal of Development Economics in 2023, researchers Yannick Dupraz and Pierre André sought to identify whether the opening of schools during this period may have affected polygamy.

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More schoolchildren, no more polygamists?

Several hypotheses could explain the observed decrease in polygamy in parallel with the increase in education. The transmission of Western cultural norms by teachers in secular or Christian schools may have encouraged monogamy. Educating women can be a source of emancipation and increase their bargaining power with their families when it comes to choosing a husband. They could also choose more easily to leave their husbands when they wish to take a second wife.

The study covers the end of the colonial period between the Second World War and independence on 1 January 1960, in rural Cameroon. The French and British had been under mandate there since the end of the First World War and, sensing the tide turning, violently repressed any desire for independence. In an attempt to quell popular discontent and with a view to assimilation, they invested massively in health and education.

In Cameroonian villages where a school had been opened, two cohorts were selected for this study: girls who were under 7 years of age at the time the school opened and who had been able to benefit from the school, and girls who were over 17 years of age at the time the school opened and who had passed the age of being able to benefit from it. Comparing these two groups in 1976, several years after the opening of the school, makes it possible to study the effect of the opening of the school on marital status. The results show that polygamy increased among men but, surprisingly and contrary to the hypotheses mentioned above, polygamy also increased among women who had had access to education.