International Food Policy Research Institute
Fourth Floor Conference Facility
5 April 2007
In this paper, we examine the relationship between gender inequality and the HIV status of individuals in Kenya. In contrast with other measures of gender inequality considered in the literature, such as intimate partner violence or sexual relationship power scales, we construct one based on economic status. Specifically, we estimate gender inequality between young women and older men for each sub-location in Kenya. Using a unique combination of data sets for our empirical analysis, we find that gender inequality in the community has a strong, positive correlation with an individual's likelihood of being HIV positive. The effects are stronger for young females, especially in Western Kenya where HIV prevalence is the highest. Marriage does not seem to have a protective effect for women against HIV infection- in fact it may be part of the problem in areas with high gender inequality. Finally, conditional on gender inequality, the poverty rate among young women in the community is either uncorrelated with individual HIV status or negatively correlated. These results may have important implications for HIV prevention policies.