The Risk of Polygamy and Wives’ Saving Behavior
研究塞内加尔一夫多妻制社会中，妻子面临的风险如何影响其储蓄行为，发现风险增加会促使妻子增加在正式或非正式机构的储蓄，但以牺牲家庭食品和个人非食品消费为代价。
In a polygamous society, all monogamous women are potentially at risk of polygamy. However, both the anthropological and economic literatures are silent on the potential impact of the risk of polygamy on economic decisions of monogamous wives. We explore this issue for Senegal using individual panel data. We first estimate a Cox model for the probability of transition to polygamy. Second, we estimate the impact of the predicted risk of polygamy on monogamous wives’ savings. We find a positive impact of the risk of polygamy on female savings entrusted to formal or informal institutions suggestive of self-protective strategies. This increase in savings comes at the cost of reduced consumption, both in terms of household food expenditures and wives’ private nonfood expenses.