 Fertility and HIV risk in AfricaYao Yao No 19501, Working Paper Series from Victoria University of Wellington, School of Economics and Finance Abstract: This paper examines the role of social and cultural norms regarding fertility in women’s HIV risk in Sub-Saharan Africa. Fertility, or the ability to bear children, is highly valued in most African societies, and premarital fertility is often encouraged in order to facilitate marriage. This, however, increases women’s exposure to HIV risk by increasing unprotected premarital sexual activity. I construct a lifecycle model that relates a woman’s decisions concerning sex, fertility and education to HIV risk. The model is calibrated to match Kenyan women’s data on fertility, marriage and HIV prevalence. Quantitative results show that fertility motives play a substantial role in women’s, especially young women’s, HIV risk. If premarital births did not facilitate marriage, the HIV prevalence rate of young women in Kenya would be one-third lower. Policies that subsidize income, education, and HIV treatment are evaluated. I find that education subsidy would reduce young women’s HIV risk most effectively by raising the opportunity cost of premarital childrearing. Keywords: HIV; Fertility; Africa; Women's health (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:vuw:vuwecf:19501 Access Statistics for this paper More papers in Working Paper Series from Victoria University of Wellington, School of Economics and Finance Alice Fong, Administrator, School of Economics and Finance, Victoria Business School, Victoria University of Wellington, PO Box 600 Wellington, New Zealand. Contact information at EDIRC. |
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