Marriage, Schooling, and Excess Mortality in Prime-Age Adults Evidence from South Africa

Introduction The institution of marriage plays a role in determining one’s risk of exposure to HIV. Since the transmission of HIV in the population is mainly through sexual activity, avoiding infection depends on risk-avoiding behavior. If the number of sexual partners is reduced after marriage, marriage may work as an institution to limit risks of HIV infection in society. This study undertook preliminary empirical assessment of recent panel data from South Africa. Results show that excess mortality is concentrated in unmarried adults aged 20–39 among both men and women (with a larger increase in mortality rate among women than men). Thus, the choice of when and who to marry appears to be related to risk of HIV exposure, leading to the authors to the primary question of this study; to determine the effect that schooling has on AIDS and excess mortality through changes in marriage behavior. This paper tests the hypothesis that schooling affects when one marries and thus impacts the risk of AIDS-related mortality. The effect of schooling on marriage-age could be negative or positive. On the one hand, since educated individuals have incentives to secure returns to their human capital in the future, more education implies earlier marriage. On the other hand, education increases the opportunity costs of marriage especially for women, who will be pressured to spend more time at home. Thus, schooling may work to keep women out of marriage and thus increase AIDSrelated mortality risk. Our hypothesis thus becomes an empirical question. The effect of education on marriage age depends on incentives. Here wage rate in labor market plays two opposite roles. First, a higher wage means high value of human capital. Thus, women have a larger incentive to protect their human capital from the HIV risks. Second, a higher wage also implies high opportunity cost of marriage. After marriage, women may need to give up some of their valuable time, increasing the share of time that they spend on housework and child rearing. This means women who have high wages have a small incentive to get married, which increases the risks of getting HIV infected in our hypothesis. If the latter incentive is greater than the former, schooling may increase the risk of exposure to HIV among women.