Essays on health and socioeconomic status

In the following three essays, I study the relationship between health and socioeconomic status. The first two chapters look at this relationship in the context of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in sub-Saharan Africa, while the final chapter focuses on child health in the United States.; In the first chapter, I use data from five countries in sub-Saharan Africa to investigate the cross-sectional relationship between HIV status and socioeconomic status. I find evidence of a robust positive education gradient in HIV infection, showing that, up to very high levels of education, more educated respondents are more likely to be HIV-positive. This gradient is not an artifact of age, sector of residence, or region of residence. Education is positively related to certain risk factors for HIV, including the likelihood of having premarital sex. Estimates of the wealth gradient in HIV, by contrast, vary substantially across countries and are sensitive to the choice of measure of wealth.; The second chapter studies one dimension in which the HIV/AIDS epidemic may influence economic conditions: its effect on human capital investment. Using data from seven countries in sub-Saharan Africa, I estimate the effect of local HIV prevalence on individual human capital investment. I find that the HIV/AIDS epidemic has affected human capital investment quite broadly: living in an area with higher HIV prevalence is associated with lower levels of completed schooling and slower progress through school. These results are consistent with a model of human capital investment in which parents and children respond to changes in the expected return to schooling driven by mortality risk.; The last chapter, which is joint work with Lisa Sanbonmatsu, studies the importance of neighborhoods---a component of socioeconomic status---in determining child health. Using data from the Moving to Opportunity randomized housing voucher experiment, we estimate the direct effects of housing and neighborhood quality on child health. We show that housing mobility has little impact on four measures of health, despite significant improvements in housing quality, nutrition and exercise, and neighborhood safety. Our results suggest that differences in neighborhood conditions explain very little of the income gradient in child health.