"Social Interactions and malaria preventive behaviours in Sub-Saharan Africa"

Social Interactions and malaria preventive behaviours in Sub-Saharan Africa

This paper examines the existence of social interactions in malaria preventive behaviours in Sub-Saharan Africa, i.e. whether an individual’s social environment has an influence on the individual’s preventive behaviours. We focus on the two population groups which are the most vulnerable to malaria (children under 5 and pregnant women) and on two preventive behaviours (sleeping under a bednet and taking intermittent preventive treatment during pregnancy). We define the social environment of the individual as people living in the same region. To detect social interactions, we calculate the size of the social multiplier by comparing the effects of an exogenous variable at the individual level and at the regional level. Our data come from 92 surveys for 29 Sub-Saharan countries between 1999 and 2012, and they cover approximately 635,000 children and 95,000 women. Our results indicate that social interactions are important in malaria preventive behaviours, since the social multipliers for the women’s education and household wealth are greater than one - which means that education and wealth generates larger effects on preventive behaviours in the long run than we would expect from the individual-level specifications, once we account for social interactions.

Speaker

Benedicte Apouey, Paris School of Economics

Hosted by

Yu Aoki

Venue

Room S86, Edward Wright Building