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Periodical article | Leiden University catalogue | WorldCat |
Title: | Mines, migration and HIV/AIDS in Southern Africa |
Authors: | Corno, Lucia De Walque, Damien |
Year: | 2012 |
Periodical: | Journal of African Economies (ISSN 0963-8024) |
Volume: | 21 |
Issue: | 3 |
Pages: | 465-498 |
Language: | English |
Geographic terms: | South Africa Lesotho Swaziland - Eswatini Zimbabwe |
Subjects: | AIDS labour migration miners sexuality |
External link: | https://jae.oxfordjournals.org/content/21/3/465.full.pdf |
Abstract: | Swaziland and Lesotho are the countries with the highest HIV prevalence in the world. These countries have in common another distinguishing feature: during the past century, they sent massive numbers of migrant workers to South African mines. The authors examine whether mining activities in a bordering country affect HIV infections. A job in the mines implies spending a long period away from the household of origin surrounded by an active sex industry. This creates potential incentives for multiple concurrent partnerships. Using demographic and health surveys, the paper shows that migrant miners aged 30 to 44 are 15 percentage points more likely to be HIV positive and that having a migrant miner as a partner increases the probability of infection for women by 8 percentage points. The authors also show that miners are less likely to abstain and to use condoms and that female partners of miners are more likely to engage in extra-marital sex. They interpret these results as suggesting that miners' migration to South Africa has increased the spread of HIV/AIDS in the countries of origin. Consistent with this interpretation, the associations between HIV infection and being a miner or a miner's wife are not statistically significant in Zimbabwe, characterized by a local mining industry. Bibliogr., notes, ref., sum. [Journal abstract] |