Socio-Economic Inequalities and HIV/AIDS Epidemic: Evidence from Sub-Saharan Africa

Content Provider	Semantic Scholar
Author	Temah, Chrystelle Tsafack
Copyright Year	2007
Abstract	Throughout the developing world, HIV/AIDS epidemic has became a major cause of death and poverty. Its consequences are readily felt on social, demographic and economic fields. The African continent is bearing the brunt of the epidemic, with its consequences readily felt on social, demographic and economic fields there. If it is generally admitted that poor health is fuelled by poverty, the relation between HIV/AIDS epidemic and poverty appears somehow paradoxical. Indeed at the international level, the most affected regions are the poorest, among Sub-Saharan African countries however, the most affected are also the richest. Nevertheless, the fact that these African countries are also those with the least egalitarian income distributions leads to wonder whether there is a specific impact of income inequality on the course of the epidemic. In addition, the distribution of the epidemic across both sexes differs according to regions, with Sub-Saharan Africa being the most gender-affected region: more than half of infected people there are women. In this paper, we try to understand these particular patterns of the epidemic by assessing the importance of income and gender inequalities as determinants of the evolution of HIV/AIDS pandemic in Sub-Saharan Africa. Using a panel data of 42 African countries from the 1997-2005 period, we examine the potential link between socio-economic inequalities (defined by income and gender inequalities) and HIV/AIDS epidemic by introducing variables representing income and gender inequalities among the traditional determinants of the epidemic. The results of our random effects model suggest that socio-economic inequalities are indeed specific determinants of the epidemic. Their impact is robust to alternative specifications of the model and to a dynamic analysis. This impact is further materialized when we simulate the effect of a reduction of inequalities on the course of the epidemic.
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Alternate Webpage(s)	https://africametrics.org/documents/conference08/day1/session2/tsafacktema.pdf
Language	English
Access Restriction	Open
Content Type	Text
Resource Type	Article