Trading HIV for sheep: Risky sexual behavior and the response of female sex workers to Tabaski in Senegal
Henry Cust,
Aurélia Lépine,
Carole Treibich,
Timothy Powell‐Jackson,
Rosalba Radice and
Cheikh Tidiane Ndour
Health Economics, 2024, vol. 33, issue 1, 153-193
Abstract:
We use a cohort of female sex workers (FSWs) in Senegal to show how large anticipated economic shocks lead to increased risky sexual behavior. Exploiting the exogenous timing of interviews, we study the effect of Tabaski, the most important Islamic festival celebrated in Senegal, in which most households purchase an expensive animal for sacrifice. Condom use, measured robustly via the list experiment, falls by between 27.3 percentage points (pp) (65.5%) and 43.1 pp (22.7%) in the 9 days before Tabaski, or a maximum of 49.5 pp (76%) in the 7 day period preceding Tabaski. The evidence suggests the economic pressures from Tabaski are key to driving the behavior change observed through the price premium for condomless sex. Those most exposed to the economic pressure from Tabaski were unlikely to be using condoms at all in the week before the festival. Our findings show that Tabaski leads to increased risky behaviors for FSWs, a key population at high risk of HIV infection, for at least 1 week every year and has implications for FSWs in all countries celebrating Tabaski or similar festivals. Because of the scale, frequency, and size of the behavioral response to shocks of this type, policy should be carefully designed to protect vulnerable women against anticipated shocks.
Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:
Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1002/hec.4756
Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.
Export reference: BibTeX
RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan)
HTML/Text
Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wly:hlthec:v:33:y:2024:i:1:p:153-193
Access Statistics for this article
Health Economics is currently edited by Alan Maynard, John Hutton and Andrew Jones
More articles in Health Economics from John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().