Data and Code for: Surviving Bad News: Health Information Without Treatment Options

Principal Investigator(s): View help for Principal Investigator(s) Alberto Ciancio, University of Glasgow; Fabrice Kämpfen, University College Dublin; Hans Peter Kohler, University of Pennsylvania; Rebecca Thornton, Baylor University

Version: View help for Version V1

Name	File Type	Size	Last Modified
3-replication-package			08/09/2024 09:20:AM

Project Citation:

Ciancio, Alberto, Kämpfen, Fabrice, Kohler, Hans Peter, and Thornton, Rebecca. Data and Code for: Surviving Bad News: Health Information Without Treatment Options. Nashville, TN: American Economic Association [publisher], 2025. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2025-01-27. https://doi.org/10.3886/E204883V1

Project Description

Summary: When there is no treatment available for a life-threatening disease, providing personal health information could lead to despair or fatalistic behaviors resulting in negative health outcomes. We document this possibility utilizing an experiment in Malawi that randomized incentives to learn HIV testing results in a context where anti-retroviral treatment was not yet available. Six years after the experiment, among HIV+s, those who learned their status were 23 percentage points less likely to survive than those who did not, with effects persisting after 15 years. Receiving an HIV+ diagnosis resulted in riskier health behaviors, greater anxiety, and higher discount rates.

Scope of Project

Subject Terms: Mortality; Health information; HIV/AIDS

JEL Classification:
      I12 Health Behavior
      I15 Health and Economic Development
      J10 Demographic Economics: General

Geographic Coverage: Malawi

Time Period(s): 2004 – 2019

Data Type(s): survey data

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Published Versions

V1 [2025-01-27]

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DDI 2.5

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