Education and HIV incidence among young women: causation or selection?

Dick Durevall (), Annika Lindskog and Gavin George ()
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Dick Durevall: Department of Economics, School of Business, Economics and Law, Göteborg University, Postal: P.O. Box 640, SE 40530 Gothenburg, Sweden, http://www.economics.gu.se
Gavin George: HEARD, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Westville Campus, Private Bag X54001, Durban 4000 South Africa

No 638, Working Papers in Economics from University of Gothenburg, Department of Economics

Abstract: Several studies report that schooling protects against HIV infection in Sub-Saharan Africa. This study examines the effect of secondary school attendance on the probability of HIV incidence among young women aged 15-24, using panel data from rural KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa. Three approaches are used to distinguish causation from selection: instrumentation to identify the causal effect, a fixed effects model to control for constant unobserved factors and assessments of the bias from selection on unobserved variables. Although there is a strong negative association between secondary school attendance and HIV incidence, we are not able to find support for a causal effect. Thus, there is no evidence that interventions that increase secondary school attendance in KwaZulu-Natal would mechanically reduce HIV risk for young women. Our focus on school attendance, in contrast to studies that analyze school attainment, might explain the negative finding.

Keywords: HIV/AIDS; Education; Schooling; South Africa (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I12 I29 O12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 31 pages
Date: 2015-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dev, nep-edu and nep-hea
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