I think the distributional consequences of polygamy are poorly understood. In a large sense, the policy redistributes from women to men. By constraining the "best" husbands from taking more than one wife, it reduces the implicit price of wives for less desirable husbands. Put differently, it constrains the choices of women about whom to marry, which can hardly make them better off. There is also, though, important implicit within-group redistribution as well.
One wonders if polygamy's good friend polyandry will make an appearance in China and India as the effects of selective abortion of women make themselves felt in the marriage market.
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>One wonders if polygamy's good friend polyandry will make an appearance in China and India as the effects of selective abortion of women make themselves felt in the marriage market.
Fascinatingly there is strong evidence for widespread polyandry in premodern China. As an undergraduate I took a course from Matthew Sommer, who does research on the topic, so the seminars would occasionally stray into a discussion of his work.
Here's a pretty good summary of his research: http://www.chinahistoryforum.com/index.php?/topic/14781-polyandry-in-qing-times/
And his faculty profile page: http://www.stanford.edu/dept/history/people/sommer_matthew.html
The way he discovered the practice is also very cool - he found it in court records from the Qing dynasty. The practice would at times lead to extreme jealousy, ending in murder or lawsuits over family property.
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