Polygamy and Population Growth

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Polygamy and Population Growth

45 Primary Sources

A black and white 1872 engraving by R. Guy McClellan depicting Brigham Young surrounded by his large polygamous family, from Gold State: a history of the Region west of the Rocky Mountains — A 1872 engraving by R. Guy McClellan depicting Brigham Young and a 'portion' of his polygamous family. Brigham Young had 56 children through polygamy.

Does the Book of Mormon teach that polygamy is instituted by God to "raise up seed"?

Yes. Jacob 2 states, "For if I will, saith the Lord of Hosts, raise up seed unto me, I will command my people."[1]

Related Question

Did Joseph Smith marry girls in their late teens before teaching publicly about polygamy?

Read more in Joseph Smith and Fanny Alger

Did polygamy actually increase the population in Utah more than it would have otherwise?

Yes, probably. Studies have shown that societies where a man can have more than one wife tend to have many more children than other societies,[2] and Latter-day Saints had a lot of children relative to the rest of the U.S. at the time, particularly while polygamy was practiced.[3]

Youth of Utah Relative to the U.S. According to Census Numbers[4]

But isn't it true that plural wives have fewer children than non-plural wives?

Yes. Latter-day Saint plural wives (and plural wives in other societies[5]) generally had fewer children than their non-plural wife counterparts.[6]

So if non-plural wives have more children than plural wives, wouldn't the population have increased even more if polygamy wasn't practiced?

No. Polygamy leads to fewer unmarried women,[7][8] which increases the number of children born in the polygamous society overall even if plural wives had fewer children than non-plural wives in that society.[9]

Was there a disparity between the number of men and women in Utah at the time?

Probably not, but kind of.

Several early Church sources suggested that there were more women than men in the early Church and that polygamy helped provide homes and spouses for these women.[10] However, accounts that are less anecdotal and more quantitative suggest there wasn't a significant disparity between men and women at the time.[11]

However, some research indicates that women were more religious than men, which would create a disparity between men and women in the context of eligibility based on religiosity.[12]

The Facts

The Book of Mormon indicates that polygamy is instituted to "raise up seed unto [the Lord]."
Plural wives in the nineteenth century individually had fewer children than non plural wives.
There was an increase in the overall birth rate in Utah due to plural marriage because polygamy led to fewer unmarried women.

Our Take

The history of polygamy can be uncomfortable, and so often, people discuss possible reasons or justifications for the practice. Those reasons aren't always clear though. The scriptures tell us that polygamy was to "raise up seed"—did that actually work?

There is some data from census records and other studies on how polygamy affected the Utah population. That data indicates that polygamy increased the population more than comparable non-polygamous populations at the time. It seems that though polygamous wives had fewer children, polygamous populations disproportionally increased because more women were married and could have children.

Understanding polygamy, and the reasons for it, is more complicated than simply stating that it was meant to increase the population. There are many more legitimate questions about polygamy, and it's okay to acknowledge the messiness and complexities of the topic. Commandments from God can have temporal justifications, but Latter-day Saints rely on faith as they make sense of something like polygamy.

What's Your Take?

Stephen
“I tend to think that the “raise up seed” concept is couched somewhere in the Abrahamic Covenant. All “seed” is ultimately God’s seed. But, for some reason “seed unto myself” is different. Perhaps it’s a way that God fulfills His Covenant more than increasing a certain population?”

Read More Difficult Questions

45 Primary Sources

Footnotes

[1]↩︎
Jacob 2 details why God would choose to institute polygamy and indicates that it would be to raise up seed.
- Jacob 2:28–32 says the Lord will command people to practice polygamy at specific times.
[2]↩︎
Multiple studies using African data have concluded that polygynous (one husband with multiple wives) groups have higher fertility than non-polygynous groups, with one economist estimating that "banning polygyny decreases fertility by 40%."
However, Warren Hern's study analyzing Amazonian tribes did find one instance where polygyny was negatively related to population growth.
[3]↩︎
Utah had a significantly more youthful population during the nineteenth century than the United States as a whole. The 1860 census recorded more children than working-age adults.
The average Latter-day Saint woman in Utah born in 1840 had over eight children during the course of her life. The average non-Latter-day Saint woman in Utah during this same time had about six and a half.
In about 1870 as polygamy declined, its impact on population growth also declined.
[4]↩︎
Stephen Cranney created a graph of the Youth Dependency Ratio calculated from census numbers.
- Stephen Cranney calculates historical youth dependency ratios for Utah.
[5]↩︎
This question is known as the "polygyny-fertility hypothesis," and has been the subject of many studies.
The general consensus is that plural wives do have fewer children (especially later wives), but this finding is not universal across cultures.
- Turnwait O. Michael and Alfred S. Ekpenyong publish scholarly article summarizing the literature on the polygyny-fertility hypothesis.
- Lee Bean and Geraldine Mineau report LDS plural wives had fewer children than non-plural-wives.
[6]↩︎
One study used the Church's genealogy records to systematically test the number of children ever born by the status of the wife.
They found that plural wives had fewer children and that later wives had even fewer throughout their life than the first wife.
- Lee Bean and Geraldine Mineau report LDS plural wives had fewer children than non-plural-wives.
[7]↩︎
For example, a study of pioneer-era Manti could only find one woman in the community born before 1852 who had never been married. Fewer than 1% of women in Manti during the polygamy era remained single their whole life, while the same was true for about 7–8% of women in the U.S. during the same time.
- Daynes reports on demographics in Manti that show exceptionally high marital rates.
[8]↩︎
Social science research has shown that polygamy led to near-universal marriage for women, which would lead to an overall population increase.
[9]↩︎
The studies that found that polygyny (one husband with multiple wives) was linked to population growth ascribed the difference to an increase in the number of women getting married.
[10]↩︎
Latter-day Saints John C. Kimball and Jedediah Grant explained that polygamy was to keep women from marrying outside of the covenant due to women outnumbering men. In his 1852 book, non-Latter-day Saint John W. Gunnison shared this view as well.
[11]↩︎
One analyst used the Pioneer Database to calculate the rate of men to women and found that there was a slightly higher number of women than men, but that they were about equal. Additionally, Apostle John Widtsoe pointed out that Church and Census Bureau records do not support the idea that there were more women in early pioneer Utah.
- Stephen Cranney in Times and Seasons presents data on how many women emigrated to pioneer Utah.
- John A. Widstoe summarizes census evidence against the theory that polygamy was implemented to address a surplus of women.
[12]↩︎
Daynes showed that the number of women who were temple-endowed was much higher than the number of men. She indicates that for every 100 endowed women, there were 82 men.
- Kathryn Daynes reports that temple-endowed women outnumbered men in 1850-1880 Utah.