Examining the Impact of Male Circumcision Supply on Women's Sexual Health Behaviors in Zambia, Poster 37

My project hopes to understand whether an increased supply of male circumcision within a community has an impact on various aspects of women’s sexual health behaviors, including the number of partners that she chooses to... [ view full abstract ]

My project hopes to understand whether an increased supply of male circumcision within a community has an impact on various aspects of women’s sexual health behaviors, including the number of partners that she chooses to pursue in a given year. To answer this question, I will use an unbalanced panel data set to estimate the statistical impact of male circumcision prevalence on the number of partners a woman chooses to have (as the primary outcome of interest), where supply is measured as the rate of self-reported male circumcision in each district, per the data. However, these initial estimations, which will include individual fixed effects, will only begin to explore the economic relationship of interest. Indeed, my proposed research project seeks to understand whether there may be certain categories of women who are more affected by the presence of male circumcision in their communities than others. As an example, I propose examining potential heterogeneous effects based on calculated level of personal sexual risk, reported levels of perceived risk, marital status, and baseline knowledge of MC benefits (which Hewett et. al. (2015) began to explore), using a series of interaction terms to isolate out potential heterogeneity.