Volume 31, Number 4 (Fall) 1996
Ahituv, Avner, V. Joseph Holz, and Tomas Philipson. 1996. "The Responsiveness of the
Demand for Condoms to the Local Prevalence of AIDS." Journal of Human Resources
31(4):869-897.
This paper investigates the degree to which the local prevalence of AIDS increases the demand for disease-preventing methods of contraception among young adults. Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY-1979), we find substantial evidence that the use of condoms was quite responsive to the prevalence of AIDS in one‘s state of residence, and this responsiveness has been increasing over time. We present both cross-sectional and longitudinal evidence estimating that a 1 percent increase in the prevalence of AIDS increases the propensity to use a condom significantly and up to 50 percent for the most prevalence-responsive groups. Our findings lend support to the existence of a self-limiting incentive effect of epidemics-an effect that tends to be ignored in epidemiological theories of the spread of infectious diseases.
Avner Ahituv is a postdoctoral fellow at the Population Research Center, University of Chicago; V. Joseph Hotz is a professor of economics at the Irving B. Harris Graduate School of Public Policy Studies, University of Chicago; and Tomas Philipson is a professor of economics at the University of Chicago. The authors thank two anonymous referees for very useful comments. They also thank William Adkinson, Michael Boozer, Duncan Thomas, Burton Singer, Noel Salinger, and the e participants in workshops at the University of Chicago, Bates College, UCLA, UC-Santa Barbara, the University of Michigan, Michigan State University, Yale University, RAND, The World Bank, and the 1994 Conference on Research in Health Economics at the University of Chicago for helpful comments on an earlier draft, and John Wright, Rishi Sood, Honnggao Cao, and Paulette Kamenecka for research assistance. Hotz gratefully acknowledges support from NICHD Grant R01-HD-31590 and Philipson from NSF Grant SBR 9409917 and The Earhart Foundation. The data used in this article can be obtained from Professor V. Joseph Hotz, The Harris School of Public Policy Studies, University of Chicago, 1155 East 60th Street, Chicago, Illinois 60637.
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