Colonial Institutions and Africa’s HIV Epidemic: Evidence from Mozambique
Presenter
Doctoral Candidate in Economics
Abstract
European powers organized colonial economic activity in sub-Saharan Africa under 3 main institutions: concessions of territory (and those living there) to private companies, labor reserves providing nearby employers with masses of male short-term workers, and colonial trade economies coercing peasants to produce agricultural commodities. To make some of the first comparisons of these institutions’ short- and long-run impacts, I exploit an arbitrary concession-labor reserve border in colonial Mozambique. The concession was Africa’s longest lasting (1891-1942) and heavily restricted workers’ mobility, while the labor reserve was one of the continent’s most important, each year supplying South African mines with 50,000 to 100,000 workers (“circular migrants”). Using colonial census data, I find that while the concession existed, men there were less likely to be circular migrants and boys were more likely to enroll in school, but there was near-total convergence in both outcomes 2 decades after its abolition. However, likely due to the lasting social effects of circular migration, men and women in the labor reserve married earlier and age gaps between spouses may have been smaller. Consistent with these patterns’ continuation, women’s HIV prevalence today is higher in the former concession and there are no differences in economic development.