Coping with Risk : The Effects of Shocks on Reproductive Health and Transactional Sex in Rural Tanzania
Transactional sex is believed to be an important risk-coping mechanism for women in Sub-Saharan Africa and a leading contributor to the HIV/AIDS epidemic. This paper uses data from a panel of women in rural Tanzania whose primary occupation is agri...
| Main Authors: | , , |
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| Format: | Policy Research Working Paper |
| Language: | English en_US |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2014
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2014/01/18832582/coping-risk-effects-shocks-reproductive-health-transactional-sex-rural-tanzania http://hdl.handle.net/10986/16827 |
| Summary: | Transactional sex is believed to be an
important risk-coping mechanism for women in Sub-Saharan
Africa and a leading contributor to the HIV/AIDS epidemic.
This paper uses data from a panel of women in rural Tanzania
whose primary occupation is agriculture. The analysis finds
that following a negative shock (such as food insecurity),
unmarried women are about three times more likely to have
been paid for sex. Regardless of marital status, after a
shock women have more unprotected sex and are 36 percent
more likely to have a sexually transmitted infection. These
empirical findings support the claims that transactional sex
is not confined to commercial sex workers and that
frequently experienced shocks, such as food insecurity, may
lead women to engage in transactional sex as a risk-coping behavior. |
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