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Vital Statistics about Polygamy

By Samuel Chapman


Many people allege "in the western world, there are barely more women than men; it is essentially 50/50." Such a view is untrue and misleading. The reply below is so that people may be able to appreciate the negative side of enforced monogamy.
You cannot have it both ways - it is either equal or there is a surplus. There is no way a surplus is
"essentially" 50/50. The truth is that the size of the excess varies from country to country. Left on its own
there is a statistically significant excess of women. The surplus is actually greater than a first examination
of statistics will show - as an excess of young boys is quickly turned into a surplus of females due to
differential mortality rates.

For your information, my examination of the official statistics for 1994 in the United Kingdom shows that
a population of 58.4 million people breaks down into 28.6 million males and 29.8 million females. In other
words there were 1.2 million more females than males in the United Kingdom at this time. That
represents a male:female split of 49:51 (with the male ratio rounded UP to 49).

If you just count those above marriageable age (which is sensible when you are talking about marriage)
there are 22.31 million males and 23.84 million females. That is a surplus of 1.53 million females. The
ratio is then 48.34 males to 51.66 females - closer to a 48:52 ratio.

This introduces competition when men are restrcited to one wife. Any surplus combined with monogamy
has a tendency to increase the size of the effective surplus. It goes like this...

If the numbers are 49:51 that means that there is a 2 per cent surplus. This means that 4.08 per cent of
the female population cannot marry if they want to. (According to the British figures it is actually 6.41 per
cent of women above the legal age of marriage). If they are determined it means they have to find a
married man and separate him from his wife. Otherwise, in their competition with other single women
they just have to offer a better deal - which may often simply mean sex without marriage. Other women
will just play the game differently - rather than marriage they will find another way of obtaining support
from men - prostitution.

This means that, in an allegedly monogamous society, men do not have to marry to get sex, or even
female companionship. They can have prostitutes from the excess of women. They can have casual sex
with the competing single women, and if they do get married they needn't be faithful because they still
remain the target of that 4.08 per cent (or higher) of the female population who are forced to be single.

Therefore, if a man does not need marriage for sex he is less inclined to get married - so the fact of an
insistance on monogamy works against itself. Men don't need to get married - they can carry on being
single - and this means that less men are in fact available for marriage. This in turn means that an even
greater section of the female population cannot get married, and therefore faces the choice between
fornication, adultery or prostitution, and so the vicious circle continues.

And to these facts must be added a couple of other variable factors. Firstly, the surplus of women
increases as they get older. But, in general, women tend to marry men slightly older than themselves -
usually around 2-4 years older on average. Thus, even if their own age cohort has a 49:51 split, the
market that they are in is likely to be a 48:52 split. In such an example, 8.33 per cent of women cannot
get married, without the extra complicating features. And when they try their own age or younger men
they are competing against younger, more attractive, more fertile, women.

Secondly, the figures are complicated by the 'impressions' that the facts create. A significant excess of
women over the number of desirable men puts them into competition even before they are of
marriageable age. Once that has happened, the actual figures do not tell the whole story, as the process
has a dynamic of its own.

Further figures show a higher rate of both marriage and cohabitation by men. These show that :

32 per cent of 22.31 million men are without partner (i.e. 7,139,200 approx)

39 per cent of 23.84 million women are without a partner ( i.e. 9,297,600 approx)

Giving a surplus of 2,158,400 women, or 9.05 per cent of the female population above marriageable
age and 23.2 per cent of women who are old enough to have a partner but do not in fact have one.

The bare figures therefore show that while the general population follows a 49:51 ratio, this works out at
over 9 per cent of all adult women and almost a quarter of single adult women who cannot marry in a
monogamous society.

By the means outlined above a seemingly small excess of women can have a large effect on society. The
availability of polygamy works against this - and so it is unsurprising to note that polygamous societies
have historically had lower rates of fornication, adultery, prostitution and abortion than our own.

The author, Samuel Chapman, lives in England. You may contact him by e mail at: [email protected]