TY  - JOUR
AU  - Levinsohn,James A.
AU  - Dinkelman,Taryn
AU  - Majelantle,Rolang
TI  - When Knowledge is not Enough:  HIV/AIDS Information and Risky Behavior in Botswana
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 12418
PY  - 2006
Y2  - August 2006
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w12418
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w12418.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
James A. Levinsohn
Yale School of Management
PO Box 208200
New Haven, CT  06520
Tel: 734/763-2319
Fax: 734/764-2769
E-Mail: James.Levinsohn@yale.edu

Taryn Dinkelman
Dartmouth College
Hanover, NH 03755
E-Mail: Taryn.L.Dinkelman@dartmouth.edu

Rolang Majelantle
Department of Population Studies
University of Botswana
Gaberone, Botswana
E-Mail: MAJELARG@mopipi.ub.bw
M2  - featured in NBER digest on 2006-08-07
AB  - The spread of the HIV/AIDS epidemic is still fueled by ignorance in many parts of the world. Filling in knowledge gaps, particularly between men and women, is considered key to preventing future infections and to reducing female vulnerabilities to the disease. However, such knowledge is arguably only a necessary condition for targeting these objectives. In this paper, we describe the extent to which HIV/AIDS knowledge is correlated with less risky sexual behavior. We ask: even when there are no substantial knowledge gaps between men and women, do we still observe sex-specific differentials in sexual behavior that would increase vulnerability to infection? We use data from two recent household surveys in Botswana to address this question. We show that even when men and women have very similar types of knowledge, they have different probabilities of reporting safe sex. Our findings are consistent with the existence of non-informational barriers to behavioral change, some of which appear to be sex-specific. The descriptive exercise in this paper suggests that it may be overly optimistic to hope for reductions in risky behavior through the channel of HIV-information provision alone.
ER  -