Socio-Economic Impact of HIV and AIDS in Tamil nadu

Table 5.18
Consumption poverty in the sample group by occupational categories
Non-HIV households
Occupation
All
Poverty head
count ratio
No. of poor
persons
No. of poor
households
Annual per capita
expenditure of
poor
Cultivation 2.53 2 12 3,773
Agri. wage labour 11.81 16 88 4,112
Non-agricultural wage 12.52 39 172 5,441
Self-employed
non-agriculture
8.51 14 66 5,267
Salaried 3.39 8 37 5,212
Others 8.39 8 40 5,594
Total 8.41 87 415 5,078
HIV households
Occupation
All
Poverty head
count ratio
No. of poor
persons
No. of poor
households
Annual per capita
expenditure of
poor
Cultivation 8.33 9 2 3,994
Agri. wage labour 16.52 38 9 3,388
Non-agricultural wage 14.32 61 15 4,060
Self-employed nonagriculture
16.04 30 7 4,576
Salaried 9.62 25 5 4,224
Others 27.83 86 19 3,339
Total 16.38 249 57 3,785
the epidemic on their own rather than
through support from the government.
These households need much greater
support from the government in terms
of access and affordability of medical
care. It is also seen that HIV households
are spending much larger amounts on
house rent than non-HIV households.
Many of them may have been forced to
sell off their houses in order to pay for
medical attention or to cope with loss
of income due to absence from work or
loss of employment. Special attention
has to be directed to the HIV households
who have to reallocate consumption
expenditure to medical expenses out of a
lower level of consumption expenditure,
mainly by reducing food expenditure.
In order to meet the heavy burden of
medical expenditure, the HIV households
are undercutting the expenditure on
other items and one of the sectors being
affected is that of education which
may later have repercussions on the
household income.
The results also show that not only are
the average and per capita savings of HIV
households lower than that of non-HIV
households for lower income groups, but
Impact on the Level and Pattern of Consumption and Savings of the Households
73