How Does Communal HIV/AIDS Affect Fertility? - Evidence from Malawi
Abstract
Recently there has been a surge in interest on how HIV/AIDS affects fertility in countries hit by the disease. In this study, the effect of communal HIV/AIDS on fertility in rural Malawi is estimated using individual data from the 2004 Malawi Demographic and Health Survey on fertility and the ideal number of children. The survey includes individual HIV status, making it possible to distinguish between behavioural and physiological effects. The main indicator of communal HIV/AIDS is the district-level prime-age mortality rate, obtained from the 1998 Population Census. The paper first tests the overall behavioural fertility response due to the epidemic, and then tests for differences in response due to gender-specific communal mortality and HIV rates, as well as individual age and knowledge about mother-to-child HIV transmission. The main findings are: communal HIV/AIDS has a negative but small impact on fertility; actual fertility and women’s ideal number of children is more negatively affected by HIV/AIDS among women than among men; and a woman’s age and knowledge about mother-tochild transmission of HIV are important determinants of her fertility response to the disease.Download Info
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the proper application to view it first. In case of further problems read the IDEAS help page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS site. Please be patient as the files may be large.Bibliographic Info
Paper provided by University of Gothenburg, Department of Economics in its series Working Papers in Economics with number 369.Length: 43 pages
Date of creation: 25 Jun 2009
Date of revision: 25 Aug 2009
Handle: RePEc:hhs:gunwpe:0369
Contact details of provider:
Postal: Department of Economics, School of Business, Economics and Law, University of Gothenburg, Box 640, SE 405 30 GÖTEBORG, Sweden
Phone: 031-773 10 00
Web page: http://www.handels.gu.se/econ/
More information through EDIRC
Related research
Keywords: fertility; gender; HIV prevalence; mortality; prime-age adult mortality;Find related papers by JEL classification:
- I10 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - General
- J13 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Fertility; Family Planning; Child Care; Children; Youth
- O12 - Economic Development, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Microeconomic Analyses of Economic Development
This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:
- NEP-AFR-2009-07-11 (Africa)
- NEP-ALL-2009-07-11 (All new papers)
- NEP-HEA-2009-07-11 (Health Economics)
References
No references listed on IDEASYou can help add them by filling out this form.
Citations
Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.Cited by:
- Dick Durevall & Annika Lindskog, 2011. "Uncovering the impact of the HIV epidemic on fertility in Sub-Saharan Africa: the case of Malawi," Journal of Population Economics, Springer, vol. 24(2), pages 629-655, April.
Lists
This item is not listed on Wikipedia, on a reading list or among the top items on IDEAS.Statistics
Access and download statisticsCorrections
When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:hhs:gunwpe:0369For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Eva-Lena Neth).
If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.
If references are entirely missing, you can add them using this form.
If the full references list an item that is present in RePEc, but the system did not link to it, you can help with this form.
If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.
Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

