Socio-Economic Impact of HIV and AIDS in Tamil nadu

Chapter 5
Impact on the Level and
Pattern of Consumption and
Savings of the Households
5.1 Consumption patterns
The pattern of expenditure of the sample
HIV and non-HIV households is presented
in table 5.1 separately for rural and urban
areas. The HIV households spend a
relatively lower proportion of their total
consumption expenditure on food than
the non-HIV households both in rural
and urban areas. However, both in HIV
and non-HIV samples, the urbanites
seem to spend less on food than the
rural households. From the table, it
appears that this could be in order to
make up for the high rents that they
need to pay. The HIV households in the
sample seem to be spending quite a huge
proportion of their income, next only to
food & other non-food, on rent, and this
is, in fact, much higher than the non-HIV
households. This could be because, as
seen in chapter three, when compared
to HIV households, a higher proportion
of non-HIV households have their own
houses. Here again, it is noticed that the
urban people pay much higher rents
than the rural ones. On items like fuel &
light, durables, education of children and
other non-food items, the proportion of
expenditure by HIV households is slightly
Table 5.1
Share of expenditure on some of the major items
(in Percentages)
Item Non-HIV households HIV households
Rural Urban Total Rural Urban Total
Cereals 16.32 11.54 13.73 11.91 8.59 10.03
Pulses 3.00 2.16 2.55 2.09 1.76 1.90
Other food 30.43 26.91 28.53 31.30 25.91 28.25
Total food 49.75 40.60 44.81 45.29 36.26 40.19
Fuel and light 6.51 9.79 8.29 5.94 8.14 7.18
House rent 0.99 6.66 4.05 3.83 13.37 9.22
Clothing & footwear 4.24 4.05 4.14 4.53 3.88 4.17
Durables 1.66 1.99 1.84 1.57 1.32 1.43
Education of children 4.23 4.20 4.22 3.84 2.70 3.20
Medical 5.41 2.54 3.86 11.56 6.10 8.48
Other non-food 27.20 30.16 28.80 23.44 28.23 26.14
Total 100 100 100 100 100 100
Impact on the Level and Pattern of Consumption and Savings of the Households
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