Financial Incentives and HIV Prevention

We evaluate a conditional cash transfer program in rural Malawi which offered financial incentives to men and women to maintain their HIV status for approximately one year. The amounts of the reward ranged from zero to approximately 4 months wage. We find no effect of the offered incentives on HIV status or on reported sexual behavior. However, shortly after receiving the reward, men who received the cash transfer were 8.5 percentage points more likely and women were 7.5 percentage points less likely to engage in risky sex. Programs that aim to motivate safe sexual behavior in Africa should take into account that money given in the present may have much stronger effects than rewards in the future.