Coping with risk: the effects of shocks on reproductive health and transactional sex in rural Tanzania

Damien de Walque, William Dow and Erick Gong ()

No 6751, Policy Research Working Paper Series from The World Bank

Abstract: Transactional sex is believed to be an important risk-coping mechanism for women in Sub-Saharan Africa and a leading contributor to the HIV/AIDS epidemic. This paper uses data from a panel of women in rural Tanzania whose primary occupation is agriculture. The analysis finds that following a negative shock (such as food insecurity), unmarried women are about three times more likely to have been paid for sex. Regardless of marital status, after a shock women have more unprotected sex and are 36 percent more likely to have a sexually transmitted infection. These empirical findings support the claims that transactional sex is not confined to commercial sex workers and that frequently experienced shocks, such as food insecurity, may lead women to engage in transactional sex as a risk-coping behavior.

Keywords: Population Policies; Health Monitoring&Evaluation; Gender and Health; Adolescent Health; Gender and Law (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014-01-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-afr and nep-agr
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:6751

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