Socioeconomic characteristics of individuals afflicted by AIDS-related prime-age mortality in Zambia
Chapoto, A.; Jayne, T.S.
AIDS, poverty, and hunger challenges and responses Highlights of the International Conference on HIV/AIDS and Food and Nutrition Security, Durban, South Africa, 14-16 April 2005: 33-55
2006
Document Number: 266766
This chapter determines the socioeconomic characteristics of individuals who die between the ages of 15 and 59 years ('prime-age' mortality), using nationally representative panel data on 18 821 individuals from 5240 households surveyed in 2001 and 2004 in rural Zambia. Overall, the probability that a prime-aged (i.e., 15- to 59-year-old) woman would die of disease-related causes was roughly 1.0% over the 3-year period, whereas the comparable probability for men was 0.6%. Just over 60% of the prime-age deaths observed in this nationally representative rural sample were women, supporting other findings that women are being disproportionately afflicted by the disease HIV/AIDS. An emerging strand of the social science literature on HIV/AIDS in Africa stresses the relationships among poverty, risky sexual behaviour, and subsequent contraction of the disease. This findings suggests that efforts to provide greater income-earning opportunities for poor women may make a modest contribution at best to reducing female prime-age mortality. The findings also indicate that the social factors driving the spread of AIDS are considerably more complex than simply poverty-based explanations, although poverty may certainly contribute to risky behaviour and poor health, which are important pathways by which the disease is spread. Moreover, it is suggested that the long-term impacts of the disease on household behaviour and welfare must be further understood and programmes that can mitigate the adverse consequences must be developed.