This is a planning grant in which Smith follows up on work that chronicles the transition toward modern marriage in Nigeria and finds that the associated ideals of morality make the discussion of, and thus protection against, risky sexual behavior more difficult than may have been the case in the past.

Dahl’s anthropological research in Botswana explores the social effects of international humanitarian organizations' efforts to provide aid during the HIV pandemic, with particular focus on programs that support orphaned children. She also finds a significant tradeoff associated with the provision of aid. In particular, aid workers provide an alternative and much needed source of authority and nurture for orphans; but in so doing the workers erode the traditional kin-network as an alternative source of care giving.

Hollos examines the well-being and social relations of sub-fertile or infertile women in Nigeria.  Two communities are compared: one that is strictly patrilineal versus one that has a mix of patri- and matrilineal practices.  While both sets of women face challenges and are, for example, more likely to be divorced from their first husband than their fertile counterparts, the women in the mixed village have better sources of support. Sub-fertile or infertile women in the patrilineal villages are more likely to migrate, shift occupations, and accumulate wealth.

Smith examines the response of Nigerian Pentecostal churches to the AIDS epidemic, focusing on the intersection between religion and health and offering deeper understandings of the popularity, meanings, and wider societal effects of the fastest-growing religion in Africa's most populous nation.

Motivated by Foster’s previous work examining the relation between democratization, allocation of public goods, and land ownership, this study will use experimental economics to determine whether the same policies would have a different effect if implemented democratically or by fiat.

Kertzer and White employed innovative multidisciplinary methodology and cutting-edge theory to seek a better explanation for very low fertility. They focused on Italy, a country that in the 1990s had the lowest fertility in the world, and which today has among the very lowest. Their findings support the views that both women’s employment and a transition towards secular values explains significant fertility variation at the individual level in Italy; however, there remains substantial evidence of the kind of regional grouping in fertility that is often attributed to ideational change.

This comprehensive study measures social support systems of children in a rural area of South Africa.  Designed to address the gaps left by standard census and survey tools, it combines intensive ethnographic data with longitudinal demographic data from the Agincourt Demographic Surveillance System (DSS). The ethnographic data can identify instances of support and relate these to information from the household database. The value of this approach is then assessed by measuring the relationship between the resulting measures of social support and child outcomes.

This project evaluates conditional economic incentives for the prevention of HIV and other sexually transmitted infections in high-risk populations in Mexico. The study focuses on willingness to accept cash transfers conditional on being free of sexually transmitted infections in key populations in Mexico, including men who have sex with men in Mexico City. Involved in this project is contingency evaluation techniques; econometric analyses, and cost effectiveness evaluation.

This project focuses on policy-relevant research on adolescent life, physical and reproductive health, and risk taking, with the goal of improving the lives of the next generation of Ethiopian citizens. Partnering U.S. and Ethiopian researchers from Brown, Emory, Jimma, and Haramaya Universities allows the project to improve long-term research capacity through enhanced training programs and communication networks and fostering jointly published scientific and policy papers.

Tyler uses objective data in the form of automatically generated web logs to examine how much and in what ways teachers in the New York City school system use ARIS, an online tool designed to deliver student information and test data to teachers in order to inform and improve instructional practice. The study will also examine the extent to which usage is associated with student achievement and school performance.