IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/urbstu/v48y2011i5p947-957.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Urbanisation, Poverty and Sexual Behaviour

Author

Listed:
  • Meredith J. Greif
  • F. Nii-Amoo Dodoo
  • Anuja Jayaraman

Abstract

The question of how urbanisation and poverty are linked in sub-Saharan Africa is an increasingly pressing one. The urban character of the HIV epidemic in sub-Saharan Africa exacerbates concern about the urbanisation–poverty relationship. Recent empirical work has linked urban poverty, and particularly slum residence, to risky sexual behaviour in Kenya’s capital city, Nairobi. This paper explores the generalisability of these assertions about the relationship between urban poverty and sexual behaviour using Demographic and Health Survey data from five African cities: Accra (Ghana), Dar-es-Salaam (Tanzania), Harare (Zimbabwe), Kampala (Uganda) and Nairobi (Kenya). The study affirms that, although risky behaviour varies across the five cities, slum residents demonstrate riskier sexual behaviour compared with non-slum residents. There is earlier sexual debut, lower condom usage and more multiple sexual partners among women residing in slum households regardless of setting, suggesting a relatively uniform effect of urban poverty on sexual risk behaviour.

Suggested Citation

  • Meredith J. Greif & F. Nii-Amoo Dodoo & Anuja Jayaraman, 2011. "Urbanisation, Poverty and Sexual Behaviour," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 48(5), pages 947-957, April.
  • Handle: RePEc:sae:urbstu:v:48:y:2011:i:5:p:947-957
    DOI: 10.1177/0042098010368575
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0042098010368575
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/0042098010368575?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
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Mark Montgomery & Paul Hewett, 2005. "Urban poverty and health in developing countries: Household and neighborhood Effects," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 42(3), pages 397-425, August.
    2. Dodoo, F. Nii-Amoo & Zulu, Eliya M. & Ezeh, Alex C., 2007. "Urban-rural differences in the socioeconomic deprivation-Sexual behavior link in Kenya," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 64(5), pages 1019-1031, March.
    3. Fay, Marianne & Opal, Charlotte, 2000. "Urbanization without growth : a not-so-uncommon phenomenon," Policy Research Working Paper Series 2412, The World Bank.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Mmari, Kristin & Blum, Robert & Sonenstein, Freya & Marshall, Beth & Brahmbhatt, Heena & Venables, Emily & Delany-Moretlwe, Sinead & Lou, Chaohua & Gao, Ershang & Acharya, Rajib & Jejeebhoy, Shireen &, 2014. "Adolescents' perceptions of health from disadvantaged urban communities: Findings from the WAVE study," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 104(C), pages 124-132.
    2. Rosina Wanyama & Theda Gödecke & Matin Qaim, 2019. "Food Security and Dietary Quality in African Slums," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(21), pages 1-17, October.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. BERTINELLI, Luisito & STROBL, Eric, 2003. "Urbanization, urban concentration and economic growth in developing countries," LIDAM Discussion Papers CORE 2003076, Université catholique de Louvain, Center for Operations Research and Econometrics (CORE).
    2. Okoye, Dozie & Pongou, Roland & Yokossi, Tite, 2017. "On the Dispensability of New Transportation Technologies: Evidence from the Heterogeneous Impact of Railroads in Nigeria," MPRA Paper 77293, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    3. Barrios, Salvador & Bertinelli, Luisito & Strobl, Eric, 2006. "Climatic change and rural-urban migration: The case of sub-Saharan Africa," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 60(3), pages 357-371, November.
    4. Sharon Barnhardt & Erica Field & Rohini Pande, 2017. "Moving to Opportunity or Isolation? Network Effects of a Randomized Housing Lottery in Urban India," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 9(1), pages 1-32, January.
    5. Beatrice W. Maina & Benedict O. Orindi & Yandisa Sikweyiya & Caroline W. Kabiru, 0. "Gender norms about romantic relationships and sexual experiences among very young male adolescents in Korogocho slum in Kenya," International Journal of Public Health, Springer;Swiss School of Public Health (SSPH+), vol. 0, pages 1-10.
    6. Sabina Alkire & Maria Emma Santos, 2010. "Acute Multidimensional Poverty: A New Index for Developing Countries," Human Development Research Papers (2009 to present) HDRP-2010-11, Human Development Report Office (HDRO), United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).
    7. Isabel Günther & Kenneth Harttgen, 2010. "Deadly Cities? A Note on Spatial Inequalities in Mortality in Sub-Saharan Africa," Courant Research Centre: Poverty, Equity and Growth - Discussion Papers 52, Courant Research Centre PEG.
    8. Laura B. Nolan, 2015. "Slum Definitions in Urban India: Implications for the Measurement of Health Inequalities," Population and Development Review, The Population Council, Inc., vol. 41(1), pages 59-84, March.
    9. Gulati, Namrata & Ray, Tridip, 2016. "Inequality, neighbourhoods and welfare of the poor," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 122(C), pages 214-228.
    10. Neil Lee & Davide Luca, 2019. "The big-city bias in access to finance: evidence from firm perceptions in almost 100 countries," Journal of Economic Geography, Oxford University Press, vol. 19(1), pages 199-224.
    11. Poelhekke, Steven, 2011. "Urban growth and uninsured rural risk: Booming towns in bust times," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 96(2), pages 461-475, November.
    12. Jedwab, Remi & Vollrath, Dietrich, 2015. "Urbanization without growth in historical perspective," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 58(C), pages 1-21.
    13. Sean Fox & Robin Bloch & Jose Monroy, 2018. "Understanding the dynamics of Nigeria’s urban transition: A refutation of the ‘stalled urbanisation’ hypothesis," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 55(5), pages 947-964, April.
    14. Marta Jankowska & Magdalena Benza & John Weeks, 2013. "Estimating spatial inequalities of urban child mortality," Demographic Research, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany, vol. 28(2), pages 33-62.
    15. Floater, Graham & Rode, Philipp & Robert, Alexis & Kennedy, Chris & Hoornweg, Dan & Slavcheva, Roxana & Godfrey, Nick, 2014. "Cities and the New Climate Economy: the transformative role of global urban growth," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 60775, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    16. Dina M. Yousri & Christian Richter, 2018. "Sociological challenges for Egypt’s development: 1981–2013," International Economics and Economic Policy, Springer, vol. 15(4), pages 727-742, October.
    17. Kostas G. Stamoulis & Prabhu Pingali & Prakash Shetty1, 2004. "Emerging Challenges for Food and Nutrition Policy in Developing Countries," The Electronic Journal of Agricultural and Development Economics, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, vol. 1(2), pages 154-167.
    18. Waśniewski, Krzysztof, 2012. "Local governments’ fiscal policy as a factor of urban development – evidence from Poland," MPRA Paper 39176, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    19. John M. Quigley, 2008. "Urbanization, Agglomeration, and Economic Development," World Bank Publications - Books, The World Bank Group, number 28042, December.
    20. Brückner, Markus, 2012. "Economic growth, size of the agricultural sector, and urbanization in Africa," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 71(1), pages 26-36.

    More about this item

    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:sae:urbstu:v:48:y:2011:i:5:p:947-957. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc 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 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: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.gla.ac.uk/departments/urbanstudiesjournal .

    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.