Sexually Transmitted Infections, Sexual Behavior and the HIV/AIDS Epidemic

Emily Oster

No 4, CID Working Papers from Center for International Development at Harvard University

Abstract: Forty million people are infected with HIV worldwide; twenty-five million of them are in Sub-Saharan Africa. This paper addresses the question of why Africa has been so heavily affected by HIV, and what explains the variation within Africa. I present a model that decomposes epidemic level into differences in sexual behavior and differences in viral transmission rates. I argue, using evidence drawn from the existing medical literature, that Africa has very high HIV transmission rates, likely due to high rates of other untreated sexually transmitted infections. The difference in transmission is large enough to explain the observed difference in prevalence between the United States and Sub-Saharan Africa. The model also provides a good fit to cross-country data within Africa and suggests that, in contrast to the intra-continental results, differences within that continent can be attributed to differences in sexual behavior and epidemic timing. The results suggest that cost-effective policy interventions would focus on decreasing transmission rates within Africa, possibly by treating other untreated sexually transmitted infections.

Keywords: HIV epidemic; sexual behavior; cost-effectiveness (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H51 I12 I18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2005-01
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (36)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.hks.harvard.edu/sites/default/files/ce ... ing_papers/004-2.pdf (application/pdf)

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:cid:wpfacu:4

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CID Working Papers from Center for International Development at Harvard University 79 John F. Kennedy Street. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chuck McKenney ().