Taryn Dinkelman

Household and community income, economic shocks and risky sexual behavior of young adults: evidence from the Cape Area Panel Study 2002 and 2005

Objective:To describe recent trends in adolescent sexual behavior in Cape Town, South Africa, and to determine whether household and community poverty and negative economic shocks predict risky sexual behavior. Data:Matched survey data on 2993 African and coloured youth from the Cape Area Panel Study 2002 and 2005. Main outcome measures:Sexual debut, multiple sexual partners in past year, condom use at last sex, measured in 2002 and 2005. Methods:We tested for changes over time in reported sexual behavior and estimate multivariate probit models to measure the association between 2002 individual, household and community characteristics and 2005 sexual behavior. Results:There was a statistically significant increase in condom use and a decrease in the incidence of multiple sexual partners between 2002 and 2005 for young women aged 17–22 years. Young women in households with 10% higher income were 0.53% less likely to debut sexually by 2005; young men in communities with a 10% higher poverty rate were 5% less likely to report condom use at last sex. Negative economic shocks are associated with a 0.04% increase in the probability of multiple partnerships for young women. Education is positively correlated with sexual debut for young women and with multiple partnerships for both sexes. Conclusion:Trends in sexual behavior between 2002 and 2005 indicate significant shifts towards safer practices. There is little evidence of a relationship between negative economic shocks, household and community poverty, and risky behavior. We hypothesize that the unexpected positive relationship between education and sexual debut may be driven by peer effects in schools with substantial age mixing.

Investing in Schooling in Chile: The Role of Information About Financial Aid for Higher Education

We investigate the impacts of providing low-income Chilean adolescents with information about how to finance higher education and ask whether providing parents with the same information magnifies the effects on schooling outcomes. We randomly assigned eighth graders and some parents to receive information about aid for higher education. Exposure to information raised college preparatory high school enrollment, primary school attendance, and financial aid knowledge, with gains concentrated among medium‐ and high‐grade students. Parental exposure to information did not significantly magnify these effects. Our results demonstrate that access to relevant information about financial aid affects important schooling choices long before tertiary education begins.

Long Run Health Repercussions of Drought Shocks: Evidence from South African Homelands

Drought is Africa’s most prevalent natural disaster and is becoming an increasingly common source of income shocks around the world. This paper presents new evidence from Africa that droughts are an important component of long run variation in health human capital. I use Census data to estimate the effects of early childhood exposure to drought on later-life disabilities among South Africans confined to homelands during apartheid. By exploiting almost forty years of quasi-random variation in local droughts experienced by different cohorts in different districts, I find that drought exposure in infancy raises later-life disability rates by 3.5 to 5.2%, with effects concentrated in physical and mental disabilities, and largest for males. An exploration of spatial heterogeneity in drought effects suggests that limits to mobility imposed on homelands may have contributed to these negative effects. My findings are relevant for low-income settings where households have limited access to formal and informal coping mechanisms and face high costs of avoiding droughts through migration.

The Effects of Financial Aid and Returns Information in Selective and Less Selective Schools : Experimental Evidence from Chile

Schools that provide higher education often belong to either a merit-based selective system or an open-access less selective system. This paper presents the results of a field experiment that provided Grade 12 students in Chile with tailored information about financial aid and average earnings and employment probabilities for schools and careers in both types of schools. No effect is found on the extensive margins of enrollment in the selective or in the less selective sector. Treated students change their intensive margin decisions: they choose careers and schools with lower expected wages and lower employment probabilities, but with higher quality relative to their baseline preferences.