Malawi Diffusion and Ideational Change Project (MDICP)

The Malawi Diffusion and Ideational Change (MDICP), a collaboration with the College of Medicine, University of Malawi, is a longitudinal study that investigates how individuals, couples, and families in rural Malawi are affected by HIV/AIDS, how they respond to the increased HIV/AIDS infection risks in terms of social interactions, sexual relations, and marriage, and how they cope with the consequences of increases in AIDS-related morbidity and mortality.

Several aspects of this research program are related to the effect of HIV/AIDS on older persons. For instance, recently initiated work aims to understand how families in rural Malawi and South Africa cope with poor health, morbidity, mortality, and income shocks, (ii) to investigate the mechanisms by which mutual help and community philanthropy are achieved among families, kin, friends, and neighbors, and how poor health, poverty, and other factors affect these mechanisms, and (iii) to analyze how social and familial relations interrelate with social norms regarding trust, reciprocity, altruism, and transfers, and how such interrelationships interact with health, disease, and food security. To achieve this general aim, the proposed project is to study altruism, fairness perceptions, trust, transfers, reciprocity, and public goods provision (AFTRP) using innovative experimental economics techniques combined with qualitative and longitudinal survey data.

The Malawi Religion Project focuses on the role of religion, and religious networks, in responses to the epidemic. Both projects are based on data we began collecting in rural Malawi in 1998. The data consist of 3 rounds of a panel survey (1998, 2001, 2004, with a fourth round scheduled and funded for 2006), as well as biomarkers for HIV and other sexually transmitted infections, qualitative data, GPS and village-level characteristics. The Malawi Religion Project, a collaboration with the College of Medicine, the University of Texas-Austin and Hebrew University, Israel, is an extension of the MDICP; for this project, we interviewed all the leaders of religious congregations in the MDICP survey sites, a sample of congregational members who are also MDICP survey respondents, and national denominational leaders. We are currently planning to collect new data on the consequences of the epidemic in a variety of dimensions, including the elderly and children.