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The Impact of Positive Income Shocks on Risky Sexual Behavior: Experimental Evidence from Tanzania

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Abstract

In this paper, we exploit a lottery in Tanzania, which randomly assigned eligible participants to receive $100 cash grants. The randomized nature of the lottery allows us to estimate the causal impact of positive income shocks on risky sexual behavior. We found that winning the lottery led men to have 0.28 (95 % CI 0.14, 0.55) more sexual partners and to a 0.21 (95 % CI 0.01–0.4) increase in the probability of unprotected sex with a non-primary partner relative to a control group of eligible non-winners. We found no significant effect of winning the lottery on the sexual behavior of women.

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Fig. 1

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Acknowledgments

The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this paper are entirely those of the authors. They do not necessarily represent the views of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development/World Bank and its affiliated organizations, or those of the Executive Directors of the World Bank or the governments they represent.

Funding

We gratefully acknowledge funding by the World Bank Research Committee, the Strategic Impact Evaluation Fund (SIEF), the Bank-Netherlands Partnership Program (BNPP), Trust Fund for Environmentally & Socially Sustainable Development (TFESSD) and Knowledge for Change Program (KCP) managed by the World Bank, and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation through the Population Reference Bureau and the National Institute on Aging (Grant #T32-AG000246).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Public Health, University of California, Berkeley, USA

    Zachary Wagner & William H. Dow

  2. Department of Economics, Middlebury College, Middlebury, USA

    Erick Gong

  3. Development Research Group, The World Bank, Washington, USA

    Damien de Walque

Authors
  1. Zachary Wagner
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  2. Erick Gong
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  3. Damien de Walque
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  4. William H. Dow
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Zachary Wagner.

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Conflict of Interest

All authors have no conflicts of interest to declare.

Ethical Approval

The study protocol was initially approved by the University of California, Berkeley’s Institutional Review Board and Tanzania’s National Institute for Medical Research. All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

Informed Consent

Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

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Wagner, Z., Gong, E., de Walque, D. et al. The Impact of Positive Income Shocks on Risky Sexual Behavior: Experimental Evidence from Tanzania. AIDS Behav 21, 650–654 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10461-016-1524-5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10461-016-1524-5

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