By Martha Henry
Educating young women has many health and economic benefits, but does continued schooling reduce a young woman’s risk of HIV infection? A study conducted in Botswana suggests that it does. The results, published in The Lancet Global Health, showed that secondary school students who stayed in school for an extra year had an 8 percentage point lower risk of HIV infection about a decade later, from 25% to about 17% infected. The effects were especially strong among young women, with an additional year of secondary schooling reducing infection risk by 12 percentage points.