Polygamy in Timor-Leste

Abstract

Abstract Demographic studies of polygamy have focused overwhelmingly on the so-called ‘polygamy belt’ in Africa and the Muslim world, and temporally on the past five decades, for which demographic and health surveys are available. Despite a wealth of anecdotal historical evidence, Southeast Asia has been overlooked in the study of polygamy. Drawing on unusually detailed colonial statistics on the collection of a polygamy tax introduced in 1923 and colonial and post-colonial census data, we reconstruct the prevalence of polygamy in Timor-Leste from the late nineteenth century until 2022. In contrast to findings in Africa that emphasize declining rates of polygamy, we find that polygamy has fluctuated across time, likely increasing between the late nineteenth century and the early 1930s, declining modestly during the final decades of colonial rule and the Indonesian occupation, and then rebounding since independence in 2002. We highlight monetization as a key factor explaining both temporal and geographic variation in the practice of polygamy.