TY  - JOUR
AU  - Juhn,Chinhui
AU  - Kalemli-Ozcan,Sebnem
AU  - Turan,Belgi
TI  - HIV and Fertility in Africa: First Evidence from Population Based Surveys
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 14248
PY  - 2008
Y2  - August 2008
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w14248
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w14248.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Chinhui Juhn
Department of Economics
University of Houston
Houston, TX 77204-5882
Tel: 713/743-3823
Fax: 713/743-3798
E-Mail: cjuhn@uh.edu

Sebnem Kalemli-Ozcan
Koc University
CASE 101
34450 Highway Rumelifeneri
Sariyer Istanbul
Turkey
E-Mail: sebnem.kalemli-ozcan@mail.uh.edu

Belgi Turan
University of Houston
E-Mail: belgituran@gmail.com
AB  - The historical pattern of the demographic transition suggests that fertility declines follow mortality declines, followed by a rise in human capital accumulation and economic growth. The HIV/AIDS epidemic threatens to reverse this path. A recent paper by Young (2005), however, suggests that similar to the "Black Death" episode in Europe, HIV/AIDS will actually lead to higher growth per capita among the affected African countries. Not only will population decline, behavioral responses in fertility will reinforce this decline by reducing the willingness to engage in unprotected sex. We utilize recent rounds of the Demographic and Health Surveys which link an individual woman's fertility outcomes to her HIV status based on testing. The data allows us to distinguish the effect of own positive HIV status on fertility (which may be due to lower fecundity and other physiological reasons) from the behavioral response to higher mortality risk, as measured by the local community HIV prevalence. We show that HIV-infected women have significantly lower fertility. In contrast to Young (2005), however, we find that local community HIV prevalence has no significant effect on non-infected women's fertility.
ER  -