Circumcision and the Labor Market Consequences Of HIV in Developing Countries

Christopher McKelvey, University of Maryland

Understanding the impact of HIV on economic outcomes is a vital piece of the puzzle when attempting to understand the broad demographic consequences of the AIDS epidemic. Estimating this relationship is problematic, however, as it is difficult to determine whether poverty causes HIV, or HIV causes poverty. This paper uses a household level dataset spanning ten countries and exploits a recent finding from the medical literature to identify random variation in HIV prevalence and estimate the impact of HIV on five labor market outcomes.