a local industry where miners do not need to migrate to South Africa to be employed. Zimbabwean miners are hence more likely to be present during the survey.

In table 1, in addition to the fraction of employees in each sector, we report the percentage of HIV infections by respondent's occupation. In the pooled sample, mining is, among the other skilled manual jobs, one of the occupations with the highest HIV prevalence rate (21.7 percent). The fraction of HIV positive respondents is even greater when we consider the sample of women: among 15 percent of women with a miner as a partner, 35 percent are HIV positive, representing the highest HIV infection rate among women. By looking separately at the three countries, the highest HIV prevalence is recorded among Basotho mineworkers, where HIV prevalence reaches 40 percent. These statistics are similar when we consider the sample of Basotho female respondents. About 36 percent of women who have a miner as a partner are HIV positive. A greater prevalence is only recorded among women with partners working as salesmen (40.8 percent) or in other skilled manual occupation (39.1 percent). The fraction of HIV positive individuals among miners ranged from 18 to 20 percent in Swaziland and Zimbabwe. The percentage of HIV infected women with a partner working in the mines is greater, with approximately 43.4 percent in Swaziland and 30 percent in Zimbabwe.

The descriptive analysis conducted so far provides an important initial piece of evidence that should be considered when designing HIV/AIDS prevention policies. Not only miners may have a higher risk of HIV infection, but also women who have miners as their partners.

# [Insert table 2]

Table 2 reports summary statistics on the variables of interest by gender. The “pooled sample” includes Lesotho and Swaziland only because in the empirical analysis we will first show results for Lesotho and Swaziland and subsequently compare them with Zimbabwe. In addition to HIV infection, we use behaviors and attitudes related to HIV prevention as dependent variables, such as abstinence, extra-marital sexual relationships and condom use. These sexual behaviors are at the heart of most prevention efforts, including the so-called "ABC" strategy ("Abstain, Be Faithful and use a Condom"), the most widespread information campaign on HIV prevention in many African countries. Abstinence, defined as not having any sexual intercourse in the last year, is generally higher for men than for women and is much lower in Lesotho than in the other countries. More precisely, the survey reports that about 34 percent of men and about 30 percent of women had no sexual relationships in the last year. This may be driven by the fact that men tend to marry later. Indeed, while the survey does not include age at first marriage, we observe that the average age for currently married men in the sample is 37 years, compared to 31 years for women.

Extra-marital intercourses, measured with an indicator equal to one if currently married respondents have at least one sexual relationship outside the marriage in the last 12 months, are frequently reported in all three countries and are more than 10 percentage points greater for men than for women. The highest percentage of extra-marital relationships is reported in Lesotho: figures from the DHS suggest that 29.8 percent of currently married men and 12.7 percent of currently married women had non-marital sexual relationships in the last year.

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