The economic impact of HIV

A close relative of the girl sees her working at the eatery. She tells the owner. The owner now has a dilemma. On the one hand, he doesn’t want to seem discriminatory toward the girl, but on the other, he feels she represents a liability to his business. What if word gets out? What if there is an accident in the kitchen? He contrives to move the girl to another part of the operation, eventually firing her on some slight pretext.

This is a true story. And it’s an often repeated one.

While the social impact of situations such as the one above is often written about, the economic impact is less so. This girl is now unable to take care of her basic needs because she has been denied an income, but her lack of a job and ill health has other economic implications for herself, her family and the country.

Trinidad and Tobago’s HIV prevalence rate* is 1.22 per cent of the population as of 2015, or approximately 15, 860 people if the population figure of 1,300,000 is used.

The number could be significantly higher because of under reporting. If the current labour force is estimated by the CSO to be 640,900 people, 15,860 persons with living and working with HIV could have effects on the country’s current and future labour pool and eventually GDP.

The National Workplace Policy on HIV (2008) quoted the ILO as quantifying yearly GDP losses due to HIV at US $45 million in TT. Meanwhile, UWI’s Health Education Unit has estimated that the country could lose up to $2.4 billion of its annual income because of HIV.

In writing about HIV’s effects on the economy Karl Theodore** has said the disease affects four different areas. The first is labour and capital’s the ability for to be productive. The second is the allocation of resources. Resources that may have been invested elsewhere, now have to go toward the fight against the spread of the disease. The third is a reduction of available income for the person living with HIV and his family. Lower income persons are more likely to feel the effects of not being able to work than those in higher income groups.

Finally, as a result of the second and the third effects, a country may not be able to grow and to innovate as others with lower HIV prevalence rates.

But another UN report suggests that the long-term effects on countries’ macro-economy may be even more serious since current research methods are not able to take into account all the variables yet.

“Estimates of AIDS’ effects on macroeconomic performance usually take no account of the loss of “social capital” or of the long-term damage that is accruing to human capital, as children’s education, nutrition and health suffer directly and indirectly as a consequence of HIV/AIDS. The effects of lowered investment in the human capital of the younger generation will affect economic performance over future decades, well beyond the time frame of most economic analyses.”***

As shown by the data, TT HIV prevalence rate has been trending downwards. While this is good, it is not a cause for complacency. In difficult economic times with uncertain ends, everything that affects the economy should be taken into account. That includes HIV.

* The prevalence rate is determined by dividing the estimated number of adults living with HIV at year’s end by the total population by year’s end.

* Karl Theodore, “HIV/AIDS in the Caribbean: economic issues— impact and investment response”. Commission on Macroeconomics and Health Working Paper Series, Paper No. WG1:1 (Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University, Center for International Developments; and Geneva, World Health Organization, 2001).

* United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs/ Population