The Role of Marriage in Fighting HIV: A Quantitative Illustration for Malawi

The HIV/AIDS epidemic is a great health and development challenge. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), 36.7 million people were living with the HIV virus in 2015. Around 70 percent of those lived in Sub-Saharan Africa. It is well known that number of sexual partners matters for the transmission of HIV. To the extent that marriage reduces the number of partners that a person has it may play an important role in mitigating the transmission of HIV. Despite its significance, the literature has not provided models in which marriage provides a haven for safer sex. This paper investigates, using a calibrated choice-theoretic general equilibrium model, how policies aimed at increasing marriage rates affect HIV prevalence rates. The analysis highlights the role that marriage as an institution plays in the transmission of HIV. It also illustrates that policies aimed at marriage may have important effects.