Health Costs of Wealth Gains: Labor Migration and Perceptions of HIV/AIDS Risks in Mozambique

Abstract

The study employs survey data from rural Mozambique to examine how men’s labor migration affects their non-migrating wives’ perceptions of HIV/AIDS risks. Using a conceptual framework centered on tradeoffs between economic security and health risks that men’s migration entails for their left-behind wives, it compares women married to migrants and those married to non-migrants while also distinguishing between economically successful and unsuccessful migration. The analysis finds that the economic success of men’s migration, rather than migration itself, significantly predicts women’s worries about getting infected by their husbands or their own extramarital partners, and their husbands’ stance on condom use. These findings are situated within a broader context of socio-economic, gender, and marital dynamics and vulnerabilities produced or amplified by male labor migration in sub-Saharan and similar developing settings.

HIV Risk Perceptions, the Transition to Marriage, and Divorce in Southern Malawi

“…Our finding that the perceived chance of future HIV infection increases following marriage suggests that young women revise their risk perceptions in response to their marital experiences. Other studies have found significant associations between HIV risk perceptions and suspicions of marital infidelity (Anglewicz and Kohler 2009; Agadjanian, Arnaldo, and Cau 2011). We believe that measures of marital behavior such as this are among the unobserved experiences that are informing the observed intra-individual changes in HIV risk perception.…”

Geographic influences on sexual and reproductive health service utilization in rural Mozambique

“…Given previous research findings about the relationship between female education and health care utilization and outcomes (Elo, 1992; Raghupathy, 1996) as well as connections between migration and reproductive and health behavior and outcomes (Agadjanian, Arnaldo, & Cau, 2011; Agadjanian, Yabiku, & Cau, 2011), education (dichotomized as five years or more of education vs. fewer than five years) and husband’s migration status (distinguishing women married to migrants from those with non-migrant husbands) are included as key non-spatial predictors (independent variables). In addition, the models account for individual and village-level characteristics: age, household wealth, the village-specific sample average of the household wealth index, the proportion of women with five or more years of education in the village sample, and the percent of women with any religious affiliation in the village sample.…”

Determined to stop? Longitudinal analysis of the desire to have no more children in rural Mozambique

“…“Successful” migrants were those whose wives report that the household is better off; men whose migration, in their wives’ assessment, worsened the household’s material conditions or did not change them were classified as “unsuccessful” migrants. This variable captures the economic impact of migration but also, indirectly, women’s perceptions of marital quality and stability, and is predictive of demographic and health-related outcomes (Agadjanian, Arnaldo, and Cau 2011; Agadjanian, Yabiku, and Cau 2011; Yabiku, Agadjanian and Cau 2012). Because we also controlled for marital status, these dummy variables effectively treat women married to non-migrants as the reference category.…”