Abhatoo - Centre Nationale de Documentation

Understanding the demographic and socioeconomic patterns of prevalence and incidence of HIV/AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa is crucial for developing programs and policies to combat HIV/AIDS. This paper looks critically at the methods and analytical challenges to studying the links between socioeconomic and demographic status and HIV/AIDS. Some of the misconceptions about the HIV/AIDS epidemic are discussed and unusual empirical evidence from the existing body of work is presented. The paper concludes with two important messages which emerge from the results. First, there is a need to continue to improve the evidence base on the link between demographic and socioeconomic status and the prevalence and incidence of HIV/AIDS, especially in light of the introduction and scaling up of antiretroviral therapy (ART). Second, it is difficult to generalize results across countries. As the results presented here and in other studies based on DHS data sets show, few consistent and significant patterns of prevalence by socioeconomic and demographic status are evident.