The Role of Assets: Insights into How The Chronically Poor Cope with HIV/AIDS

• Main Author: D. Lawson
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Institut Veolia Environnement 2010-09-01
• Series: Field Actions Science Reports
• Subjects: Asset Smoothing; D10; HIV/AIDS; Poverty dynamics; Q-Squared; Uganda ; JEL Classification: I32
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/factsreports/254

The paper extends the combined research methods literature with an investigation of the impact of ill health on assets and consumption behaviour of the chronically poor. Focusing on Uganda, and using national household panel data for 1992-99, the study extends the survey by visiting the same households and collecting both life history and further quantitative data. By adopting such an approach we are able to further explain a number of important issues that underly the role ill health plays in the lives of the chronically poor. In particular we find a clear association between sickness and descents into poverty. Asset smoothing seems to be very common amongst households that encounter general sickness, with food consumption almost always reduced, for a period of time, before selling assets. In contrast households suffering from HIV/AIDS, or at least severely physically debilitating sickness, often consumption smooth.