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HIV/AIDS, poverty and schooling: an AIDS epidemic or a poverty epidemic?

Apocalyptic assumptions about the impact of high HIV/AIDS prevalence rates may be unhelpful, as they obscure the complex nature of the development problems facing affected populations. In the area of education, new evidence from Uganda and Tanzania suggests that the impact of HIV/AIDS may not be as simple or direct as has been assumed.

HIV/AIDS needs to be analysed as a cross-cutting issue intrinsically linked to poverty and policy if its impacts are to be addressed adequately. HIV/AIDS has clearly had a devastating impact on many societies in sub-Saharan Africa, but the epidemic is not solely or simply to blame for all the reverses in development progress in the continent. The complex nature of the impact of HIV/AIDS has been highlighted in current research on educational enrolments in Uganda and Tanzania.

It has been widely assumed that high rates of HIV/AIDS infection will directly affect the provision of education, through rising child and teacher illness and death rates. Researchers from the University of Liverpool challenge these assumptions about the direct demographic impacts of HIV/AIDS on school enrolments in Uganda and Tanzania. Demographic models for producing projections of the school-age populations and enrolment rates have been developed to help the education ministries plan for the future of their education systems.

These projections are initially helpful within ministries of education for estimating potential enrolments at the national scale. However, these need to be supplemented by social analysis at the local scale in order to explore the links between HIV/AIDS and school enrolment, as these links need to be understood in the context of poverty and economic and educational policy. HIV/AIDS-sensitive population projections show that, as a result of AIDS-related falls in fertility and increasing child mortality, the demographic demand for schooling in the next decade will be substantially below the levels currently being projected by existing ministries of education.

The ongoing research is based on the presumption that the demographic impact of HIV/AIDS is only one of the several factors likely to affect the education system:

As policy-makers have already recognised in Tanzania, the impact of HIV/AIDS is better understood and addressed in relation to problems of poverty.
One dimension of the HIV/AIDS-poverty relationship is rising economic inequality, as HIV-positive adults are increasingly unable to work and lose their land or other assets.
A second dimension of the relationship is that between high prevalence rates and declining incomes, which is evident at both national and regional levels.
However, HIV/AIDS is not usually the sole or even the main cause of increasing inequality and poverty: orphanhood may not be as important as poverty in explaining school dropouts, and low commodity prices and structural adjustment may be more important factors than HIV/AIDS effects in regulating the declining national school enrolments.

The ongoing research illustrates the importance of understanding the complex and cross-cutting impacts of HIV/AIDS, rather than seeing it as having independent and direct effects on society. Policy implications include that:

it is important not to underestimate the serious impacts of the epidemic on future school-aged populations, but HIV/AIDS needs to be situated in a broader context of educational policy, and linked to problems of poverty more generally
the 'mainstreaming' of HIV/AIDS concerns in both Uganda and Tanzanian education ministries is a positive move towards the treatment of HIV/AID as a cross-cutting problem, rather than treating it as an issue independent of other development concerns

The elaboration of these and other policy-related concerns is the focus of the second major phase of the project, a social demand survey at the local level in 12 schools in two districts of Tanzania, the specific results of which will be communicated at a later date.

Source(s):
'HIV/AIDS, poverty and schooling in Tanzania and Uganda', a draft paper prepared for the meeting of the British Society for Population Studies on 'Poverty and Well-being in HIV/AIDS affected African countries', at the Royal Statistical Society, London, by B. Gould and U. Huber, 2002

Funded by: Department for International Development (DFID)

id21 Research Highlight: 19 November 2002

Further Information:
Bill Gould and Ulli Huber
Department of Geography
University of Liverpool
Liverpool, L69 3BX, UK

Tel: +44 (0)151 794 2853
Fax: +44 (0)151 794 2866
Contact the contributor: wtsg@liv.ac.uk

Department of Geography, University of Liverpool, UK

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