

Q: Why Monogamous Marriage? A: Lower crime, higher economic growth - gwern
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/5317066/2012-heinrich-puzzlemarriage.pdf

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gwern
""The anthropological record indicates that approximately 85 per cent of human
societies have permitted men to have more than one wife (polygynous marriage),
and both empirical and evolutionary considerations suggest that large absolute
differences in wealth should favour more polygynous marriages. Yet, monogamous
marriage has spread across Europe, and more recently across the globe, even as
absolute wealth differences have expanded. Here, we develop and explore the
hypothesis that the norms and institutions that compose the modern package of
monogamous marriage have been favoured by cultural evolution because of their
group-beneficial effects—promoting success in inter-group competition. In
suppressing intrasexual competition and reducing the size of the pool of
unmarried men, normative monogamy reduces crime rates, including rape, murder,
assault, robbery and fraud, as well as decreasing personal abuses. By
assuaging the competition for younger brides, normative monogamy decreases (i)
the spousal age gap, (ii) fertility, and (iii) gender inequality. By shifting
male efforts from seeking wives to paternal investment, normative monogamy
increases savings, child investment and economic productivity. By increasing
the relatedness within households, normative monogamy reduces intra-household
conflict, leading to lower rates of child neglect, abuse, accidental death and
homicide. These predictions are tested using converging lines of evidence from
across the human sciences.""

