For those that happen to be as interested in Mormon history as I am, I was looking for data from the early Utah period - specifically the male/female ratio of adults, the ratio of polygamous/monogamous women, and the birth rate of polygamous/monogamous women. The goal being to see if polygamy should be considered a success by the common reason given to "raise up a righteous seed." In other words, if the reason to institute polygamy by Joseph Smith was to grow the population of church members “organically”, if you will, then was that actually even a success? The concept is that sharing the gospel should be done both through conversion and also through raising your own children in the church, so you should have as many children as possible to grow the kingdom of God. This is an oversimplification of the pervasive culture of large families, but it's the basic premise. Eventually it just became automatic. When I asked my mom why she had seven kids, she said "it's just what people did."
Unsurprisingly, there have been a number of studies on this issue, all with slightly different numbers but with the same conclusion. That is, polygamous women actually had lower birth rates, on average, compared to their monogamous Mormon counterparts (only 25-30% of the population at that time were in polygamous relationships).
This study shows that polygamist women had a birth rate of 7.4 vs 7.8 for monogamous women.
The study referenced here shows 5.9 vs 8.
Well you could say that maybe there were a lot fewer men than women so even though the birth rate is lower, many of those women may not have had children at all if it weren't for polygamy. It turns out that the opposite is actually true. The U.S. Census gathered data from the Utah territory during that time, so I found this page in the 1880 Census (I picked this decade since it was kind of the peak of polygamy) that shows Utah's population as 52% male and 48% female overall. If you break out just the marriage ages of 20 (it was as low as 13 for women but men were older) to 39, each age bracket has a higher male percentage. Of course, even if it were slightly more women, that wouldn’t necessitate a call to arms of all women to marry someone quickly to save the population.
So if the data show no sign of polygamy helping to spur growth in the church population (more than the already high fertility rate in general), then how does the church justify it in retrospect? In the church’s essay on this topic they basically say that the efficiency, if you will, of child-bearing may have been higher. Meaning that although birth rates were lower for polygamous wives and men outnumbered women, it was much easier and more common for any woman to marry and have children that wanted to. The idea is that it solved the problem of single women that couldn't find a match during her childbearing years and, therefore, the total number of children born may have actually been higher than it would have been otherwise.
So how many additional children would that be? The percentage of women in the U.S. that were never married by age 45 was about 7% in 1880, so let's use that even though it was likely lower in monogamous Utah. Generously assuming that all single women were married under polygamy that wouldn't have been otherwise, that totals roughly 1,700 women (24,857 women in Utah age 15-39 * 7% = 1,740). This isn't including 13 and 14 year olds so you can increase that number if you want to go there.
So if one is comfortable balancing all of the problems with polygamy and the way that it was implemented (polyandry, secret teenage marriages, lying to your wife and the public about it for a decade, etc.) with an extra 1,700 missionary wombs, then it totally makes sense. Otherwise, given that the explanation (raising up a righteous seed) didn't actually happen, I think you have to go the Abrahamic test route if you want to be chill with this one.
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