IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/aea/apandp/v116y2026p578-583.html

Men’s Classified Ads and Risky Health Behaviors

Author

Listed:
  • Hasan Shahid

Abstract

Risky health behaviors are private and rarely observed. This paper introduces a novel dataset of over 170,000 men’s classified advertisements published between 1975 and 1992 in The Advocate, the largest and longest-running national LGBT magazine in the United States. Using high-frequency text data, this paper documents significant changes in the content of ads during the early years of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, most notably a pronounced rise in the take-up of safe sex language following the first reports of AIDS. These findings offer rare insight into how perceived health risks shaped sexual behaviors during the very early years of the epidemic.

Suggested Citation

  • Hasan Shahid, 2026. "Men’s Classified Ads and Risky Health Behaviors," AEA Papers and Proceedings, American Economic Association, vol. 116, pages 578-583, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:aea:apandp:v:116:y:2026:p:578-583
    DOI: 10.1257/pandp.20261053
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/pandp.20261053
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to AEA members and institutional subscribers.
    File URL: https://doi.org/10.3886/E247757V1
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.aeaweb.org/articles/materials/25314
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1257/pandp.20261053?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to

    for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D81 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Criteria for Decision-Making under Risk and Uncertainty
    • D91 - Microeconomics - - Micro-Based Behavioral Economics - - - Role and Effects of Psychological, Emotional, Social, and Cognitive Factors on Decision Making
    • I12 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Health Behavior
    • L82 - Industrial Organization - - Industry Studies: Services - - - Entertainment; Media
    • M37 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Marketing and Advertising - - - Advertising

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:aea:apandp:v:116:y:2026:p:578-583. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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 RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Michael P. Albert (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/aeaaaea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.