In a polygamous context, monogamous husbands and wives may have opposite incentives to save. Note, first, that qualitative evidence in the case of Senegal suggests that husbands and wives pool neither their income nor their savings (BoltzLaemmel and Villar 2013). No theoretical work has yet investigated the impact of the risk of polygamy on spouses’ saving behavior. However, analogies exist with discussions about the risk of marital dissolution in the context of developed countries (González and Özcan 2013).<sup>3</sup> The potential arrival of a second wife represents a potential negative income shock for monogamous wives, who may then have an incentive to increase their precautionary savings. Indeed, in Senegal, the expected contributions of husband and wife to the household budget are not symmetrical: men are expected to provide for their household while women are not (Boltz-Laemmel and Villar 2013). The arrival of a cowife thus implies a decrease in the household per capita income and consumption level, especially if she is accompanied by children from a former union.<sup>4</sup> Monogamously married women may thus have an incentive to save more if the perceived risk of polygamy increases in order to protect themselves against a negative income shock.

Another channel may lead women at risk of polygamy to have higher precautionary savings. Anecdotal evidence suggests that the cohabitation of cowives may be a source of conflict. When faced with the arrival of a cowife, women have an outside option, which is divorce (Antoine 2002; Locoh and Thiriat 1995). Divorce is indeed relatively frequent in Senegal. However, this option is costly since divorced women have to leave their former husband’s household and either be taken in by a related household or earn their own living, creating additional incentives for wives to increase their precautionary savings.<sup>5</sup> Two recent papers, in the very different contexts of Ireland and the United States, indeed suggest that women who are faced with a higher risk of divorce both save (González and Özcan 2013) and work more (Papps 2006).

However, the expected impact of an increase in the risk of polygamy on monogamous wives’ saving behavior is theoretically ambiguous since it depends on the possibility for women to protect their own savings from being seized by their husbands. Indeed, if the wife’s savings can be used by the husband to finance the cost of a second wife, the risk of polygamy is expected to have a negative impact on wives’ savings (Antoine 2002). Note that in Senegal data from the PSF survey suggest that the cost of marrying a second wife is high: in addition to the wedding ceremony and the work to set up a room for the new cowife, the husband has to pay a

> 3 Or the risk of late marriage (Kureishi and Wakabayashi 2013). Note that other channels may create different incentives to save for married men and women. One in particular is explored by Browning (2000): based on a two-person household model best suited to the context of developed countries, he shows that the age difference between spouses and the higher longevity of women generates different incentives to save for men and women.

4 Indeed, 34 percent of polygamous wives of rank 2 were either divorcees or widows before remarrying, while this is the case of only 11 percent of first wives.

5 Note, however, that in the Senegalese context, divorcing is all the more costly as divorced women are pressed to remarry and are most often constrained to marry as a second- or higher-rank wife. Moreover, divorced women may be constrained to leave some of their children to their husband, which represents a further cost of divorce.

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