When abstinence increases prevalence

Abstract

In the pool of people seeking partners, a uniformly greater preference for abstinence increases the prevalence of infection and worsens everyone's welfare. In contrast, prevention and treatment reduce prevalence and improve payoffs. The results are driven by adverse selection: people who prefer more partners are likelier disease carriers. A given decrease in the number of matches is a smaller proportional reduction for people with many partners, thus increases the fraction of infected in the pool. The greater disease risk further decreases partner-seeking and payoffs.