Polygamy

Islam founder Muhammad was married to a rich widow and lived a prosperous life. Up until 1000 A.D., the Middle East accounted for 10 percent of global GDP, which was bigger than Europe`s share. Critics cite polygamy as the reason Mideast wealth contracted to just 2 percent of global GDP in the 1700s. Because families had too many members to support, they could not build up wealth. A verse in the Quran says, "You may have two, three or up to four widows you like as wives.” This was a way of survival for Muslims in which winners of war had to support the livelihoods of the surviving wives and children of men who died in battle. From the perspective of the West, which insisted on monogamy, an outdated marriage system led to the creation of a regressive economy.

In the U.S., the drama series “Big Love,” in which a man lives with three wives, has made a big splash on the cable channel HBO. In Canada, a trial will determine whether the ban on polygamy is right or wrong. The American drama is a fictitious story about Mormon fundamentalists living in Utah, but the Canadian trial is a real situation involving a Mormon faction in British Columbia. Some even argue that allowing a man to have only one wife is inhumane. Many Muslim families in Canada live under polygamy because the husband is economically better off or the wife is ill.

In Russia, many women are demanding legalization of polygamy. Caroline Humphrey, an anthropology professor at Cambridge University in the U.K., said ethnic Mongolian women of Siberian origin truly consider polygamy "a gift from God." The reason is that women outnumber men amid the recession. Only when a custom allowing multiple women to share a competent man is allowed can women and children benefit from economic and physical assistance. This has been repeatedly voted down by parliament, however.

Gary S. Becker, a Nobel Prize laureate in economics, says polygamy stimulates competition among men and thus increases efficiency in the marriage market. There are always women who want a rich and competent husband rather than someone poor and incompetent. After earning a doctorate under his mentorship, however, a female student of Becker said, “At the end of the day, this is a system that gives more benefits to men who are more talented,” in changing her opinion. Amid lack of jeonse (lump sum-based loan to rent a home) supply and soaring rental prices coupled with a sluggish economy, an expanding marriage gap is taking hold in Korea. In the U.S., men who are more educated and enjoy higher standards of living get married and have a low rate of divorce. Polygamy might be a mutated form of marriage that has penetrated this trend.

Editorial Writer Kim Sun-deok (yuri@donga.com)