Asymmetric information in the marriage market may cause adverse selection and delay marriage if partner quality is revealed over time. Sexual safety is an important but hidden partner attribute, especially in areas where HIV is endemic. A model of positive assortative matching with both observable (attractiveness) and hidden (sexual safety) attributes predicts that removing the asymmetric information about sexual safety accelerates marriage and pregnancy for safe respondents, and more so if they are also attractive. Frequent HIV testing may enable safe people to signal and screen. Consistent with these predictions, we show that a high-frequency, “opt-out” HIV testing intervention changed beliefs about partner’s safety and accelerated marriage and pregnancy, increasing the probabilities of marriage and pregnancy by 26 and 27|$\%$| for baseline-unmarried women over 28 months. Estimates are larger for safe and attractive respondents. Conversely, a single-test intervention lacks these effects, consistent with other HIV testing evaluations in the literature. Our findings suggest that an endogenous response to HIV risk may explain why the HIV/AIDS epidemic has coincided with systematic marriage and pregnancy delays.

中文翻译：

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婚姻市场中的逆向选择：马拉维农村的艾滋病毒检测和婚姻

婚姻市场中的信息不对称，如果随着时间的推移暴露伴侣的质量，可能会导致逆向选择和延迟婚姻。性安全是一个重要但隐藏的伴侣属性，尤其是在艾滋病毒流行的地区。具有可观察（吸引力）和隐藏（性安全）属性的正分类匹配模型预测，消除关于性安全的不对称信息会加速安全受访者的婚姻和怀孕，如果他们也有吸引力，则更是如此。频繁的 HIV 检测可以使安全的人发出信号并进行筛查。与这些预测一致，我们表明，高频“选择退出”艾滋病毒检测干预改变了人们对伴侣安全的看法，加速了婚姻和怀孕，将结婚和怀孕的概率分别提高了 26 和 27|$\%$| 适用于 28 个月以上的基线未婚女性。对于安全和有吸引力的受访者，估计值更大。相反，单一测试干预缺乏这些效果，这与文献中的其他 HIV 检测评估一致。我们的研究结果表明，对 HIV 风险的内源性反应可以解释为什么 HIV/AIDS 流行与系统性的结婚和怀孕延迟同时发生。