Educational impact on women’s HIV knowledge and stigma beliefs: evidence from universal primary education in Malawi

This paper examines the impact of education on women's comprehensive knowledge of HIV and stigma in Malawi, utilizing data from three waves of the nationally representative Malawi Demographic Health Survey. Education plays a critical role in improving health knowledge and countering misinformation, as underscored by SDG3. Our study employs the universal primary education policy implemented in 1994 as an instrumental variable, revealing that women affected by the reform experienced improvements in their education. We find that each additional year of schooling increases the likelihood of women being informed about STIs, enhances their comprehensive knowledge of HIV, and reduces their adherence to HIV stigma beliefs. The robustness of our findings is confirmed through various tests. We also find varying effects of STI knowledge, HIV knowledge, and HIV stigma across demographics. STI knowledge is more significant among rural, low-income, and religious women, while HIV knowledge has subtler impacts on rural and religious women. HIV stigma is stronger among urban, low-income, and religious women. Furthermore, we explore different pathways, such as cognitive skills development, labor market engagement, and exposure to health information, to provide deeper insights into the underlying mechanisms driving these outcomes.