Demographic and socioeconomic impact of AIDS: taking stock of the empirical evidence.

Abstract

Since 1998, a large amount of new evidence has become available from specialist community-based studies, national surveys and censuses. Various analytical techniques have been developed that allow us to use these data in new ways. In addition to demographers and epidemiologists, social scientists and economists are now starting to look at empirical evidence on the effects of HIV, at the family, community and national level. Although modelling was the primary basis for an assessment of the size and future of the epidemic in the past, increasingly use is made of real data to inform policy and to evaluate national responses to the epidemic. In this context it is timely and appropriate to re-visit this problem area, to summarize our wider knowledge of the demographic and social impacts of the epidemic, and to broaden the range of effects that we scrutinize critically to include macro and microeconomic impacts. These impacts of AIDS are having an increased impact on policy making: the health services are stretched; the education system is losing teachers; and numbers of orphans are growing. Policy needs to be advised by good data and rigorous analysis. A scientific meeting on the Demographic and Socioeconomic Impact of AIDS was held in Durban, South