HIV-Related Knowledge and Risky Sexual Behaviour in Sub-Saharan Africa

Using population-based samples of 19 sub-Saharan African countries, this paper investigates the effects of different levels of HIV/AIDS knowledge on the sexual behaviour of males with country-specific effects and controls for socio-economic characteristics and location of residence. The main findings are that HIV/AIDS knowledge increases the likelihood of using condoms with and without commercial sex workers, has no significant effect on the likelihood of paying for sex and increases the likelihood of having both pre- and extramarital sex. These results indicate that increased HIV knowledge, on average, is not associated with safer sexual behaviour among males in sub-Saharan Africa.