The Household Impacts of Treating HIV/AIDS in Developing Countries

Goldstein M, J Graff Zivin and H Thirumurthy, “The Household Impacts of Treating HIV/AIDS in Developing Countries,” in Annual World Bank Conference on Development Economics 2009: People, Politics, and Globalization, YL Justin, and B Pleskovic (Eds.), World Bank Publications, June 2010.

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Recent data on the household impacts of providing antiretroviral therapy to HIV infected adults permit a much fuller assessment of the economic footprint of treatment than was previously possible. Drawing on evidence from treatment programs in western Kenya and several countries of Sub-Saharan Africa, the authors discuss a range of benefits to the households of patients receiving treatment. These benefits begin with the labor market outcomes of treated patients, who are able to significantly increase their work hours within six months after they initiate treatment. In the same time period, substantial improvements take place in the nutritional status and school attendance of children in patients’ households, which in turn can improve the future wellbeing of these children. The results demonstrate that treatment can mitigate the negative socioeconomic consequences of HIV/AIDS. The authors argue that the findings provide an added rationale for the continued scaling up of treatment programs, which should be viewed as investments that offer large, long-term economic returns to society.