Reply to Rieger and Wagner: Context matters when studying purportedly harmful cultural practices

Rieger and Wagner (1) present three lines of critique. First, Rieger and Wagner (1) argue that our (2) demonstration that polygyny predicts higher child weight-for-height z-scores (WHZ) in two out of three ethnic groups practicing polygyny should be disregarded because of inadequacies of this measure. We defend our use of WHZ because: (i) although no measure is perfect, many studies unequivocally confirm that WHZ is a useful indicator of acute malnutrition, highly predictive of child mortality (3); and (ii) regardless of construct validity, WHZ scores have guided the international development sector for decades, our primary audience in addressing claims that polygyny is universally harmful. We also emphasize that our interpretation that polygyny may, in certain …