Table 3. Association between national age of consent and human immunodeficiency virus testing and counselling, 15 sub-Saharan countries, 2011–2016.
| Characteristic |
HIV testing in the past 12 months |
|||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| All adolescents (n = 30 652)a |
Sexually active adolescents (n = 10 561)a |
|||
| Rate difference, percentage points (95% CI) |
RR (95% CI) |
Rate difference, percentage points (95% CI) |
RR(95% CI) |
|
| Legal age of consent | ||||
| ≥ 16 years | Ref. | Ref. | Ref. | Ref. |
| ≤ 15 years | 11.0 (7.2 to 14.8) | 1.74 (1.35 to 2.13) | 11.8 (7.0 to 16.6) | 1.52 (1.21 to 1.83) |
| Sex | ||||
| Male | Ref. | Ref. | Ref. | Ref. |
| Femaleb | 8.6 (4.2 to 13.1) | 1.55 (1.19 to 1.91) | 12.1 (8.0 to 16.2) | 1.54 (1.30 to 1.78) |
| Age of respondent | ||||
| 15 years | Ref. | Ref. | Ref. | Ref. |
| 16 years | 3.6 (2.2 to 5.0) | 1.24 (1.14 to 1.34) | 2.3 (−1.4 to 6.0) | 1.10 (0.93 to 1.26) |
| 17 years | 6.3 (4.7 to 7.9) | 1.42 (1.30 to 1.53) | 5.7 (0.6 to 10.8) | 1.24 (1.00 to 1.48) |
| 18 years | 9.6 (7.7 to 11.6) | 1.64 (1.45 to 1.82) | 8.7 (5.2 to 12.2) | 1.37 (1.19 to 1.56) |
CI: confidence interval; HIV: human immunodeficiency virus; Ref.: reference group; RR: rate ratio.
a Adolescents aged 15–18 years.
b Never pregnant females aged 15–18 years.
Notes: We obtained survey data from Demographic and Health Surveys and AIDS Indicator Surveys. We formed propensity score matched sample by matching adolescents exposed to either ≤ 15 or ≥ 16 years of age-of-consent law, on individual, household and national-level characteristics (Table 1), using 1:1 nearest neighbour matching.