Causal effects of HIV on employment status in low-income settings

Jessica Ochalek, Paul Revill and Bernard van den Berg

Economics & Human Biology, 2017, vol. 27, issue PA, 248-260

Abstract: This paper estimates the causal impact of being HIV positive on individual employment status using a recursive bivariate probit with male circumcision as the instrument to overcome the endogeneity arising from simultaneity bias. The results show that being HIV positive reduces the probability of being employed by 5 percentage points among males in Uganda. The effect is greater for individuals employed in manual labor than non-manual labor. When limiting the sample to mainly individuals employed in subsistence agriculture, we find a 4 percentage point reduction in the likelihood of employment, suggesting that the effect occurs primarily through reductions in labor supply as opposed to demand. This is supported by additional analysis using univariate probit regressions to assess the association between different levels of HIV illness (as measured by CD4 cell count) and the likelihood of employment. The magnitude of the association increases as CD4 cell count decreases. Having a CD4 cell count of 200permm3 or below is associated with a 9 percentage point reduction in employment compared to individuals with CD4 cell counts above 200permm3.

Keywords: Employment; HIV/AIDS; CD4; Instrumental variable; Recursive bivariate probit (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1570677X16301459
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

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:eee:ehbiol:v:27:y:2017:i:pa:p:248-260

DOI: 10.1016/j.ehb.2017.09.001

Access Statistics for this article

Economics & Human Biology is currently edited by J. Komlos, Inas R Kelly and Joerg Baten

More articles in Economics & Human Biology from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().