Sex and the mission: the Conflicting Effects of early Christian Missions on HIV in sub-Saharan Africa

Julia Cagé and Valeria Rueda

JODE - Journal of Demographic Economics, 2020, vol. 86, issue 3, 213-257

Abstract: This paper investigates the long-term impact of historical missionary activity on HIV in sub-Saharan Africa. On the one hand, missionaries were the first to invest in modern medicine in the region. On the other hand, Christianity influenced sexual beliefs and behaviors that affect the risk of contagion. We build a new geocoded dataset locating Protestant and Catholic missions in the early 20th century, as well as the health facilities they invested in, that we combine with individual-level Demographic and Health Survey data. With these data, we can address separately these two channels, within regions close to historical missionary settlements. First, we show that proximity to historical missionary health facilities decreases the likelihood of HIV; persistence in healthcare provision and safer sexual behaviors in the region explain this result. Second, we show that regions close to historical missionary settlements exhibit higher likelihood of HIV. This effect is driven by the Christian population in our sample. This suggests conversion to Christianity as a possible explanatory channel. Our findings are robust to alternative specifications addressing selection.

Keywords: Africa; Christianity; Healthcare infrastructure; Historical persistence; HIV/AIDS; Missions; Sexual behaviors (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D72 N37 N77 O33 Z12 Z13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020-09-01
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (26)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1017/dem.2019.16 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Sex and the mission: the conflicting effects of early Christian missions on HIV in sub-Saharan Africa (2020)
Working Paper: Sex and the Mission: The Conflicting Effects of Early Christian Missions on HIV in Sub-Saharan Africa (2020)
Working Paper: Sex and the Mission: The Conflicting Effects of Early Christian Missions on HIV in Sub-Saharan Africa (2020)
Working Paper: Sex and the Mission: The Conflicting Effects of Early Christian Missions on HIV in sub-Saharan Africa (2019)
Working Paper: Sex and the Mission: The Conflicting Effects of Early Christian Missions on HIV in sub-Saharan Africa (2019)
Working Paper: Sex and the Mission: The Conflicting Effects of Early Christian Missions on HIV in sub-Saharan Africa (2019)
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:ctl:louvde:v:86:y:2020:i:3:p:213-257

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in JODE - Journal of Demographic Economics from Cambridge University Press Place Montesquieu 3, 1348 Louvain-la-Neuve (Belgium). Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sebastien SCHILLINGS ().