This paper draws upon development economics theory, demographic projections, and empirical evidence to consider the likely consequences of the HIV/AIDS pandemic for the agricultural sector of the hardest-hit countries of Eastern and Southern Africa. We identify four processes that have been...

This study estimates the impacts of prime-age (PA) adult morbidity and mortality on crop production and cropping patterns, household size, livestock and non-farm income in Zambia using nationally representative rural farm household longitudinal survey data. The findings provide important...

Published by Tegemeo Institute for Agricultural Policy and Development

The view that widows and their dependents face greater livelihood risks in the era of HIV/AIDS is indeed supported by nationally-representative survey results from Zambia. Efforts to safeguard widows’ rights to land through land tenure innovations involving community authorities may be an...

Beyond the obvious catastrophic effects of the HIV/AIDS pandemic on mortality, demographic changes, and the suffering of individuals and their families, we are still only learning about the complex longer-term effects of the pandemic on poverty and vulnerability. For example, the HIV/AIDS...

Since the southern African food crisis of 2001/02, the ‘new-variant famine’ (NVF) hypothesis first proposed by de Waal and Whiteside (2003) has become an important part of the conventional wisdom surrounding the relationship between HIV/AIDS and food crises in the region. The NVF hypothesis...

1. The percentage of households that are headed by widows in rural Zambia increased from 9.4 % to 12.3% between 2001 and 2004. 2. Within 1 to 3 years after the death of their husbands, widow-headed households, on average, controlled 35 percent less land than what they had prior to their...

1. Consistent with the New Variant Famine (NVF) hypothesis, the negative impact of drought on crop output and output per hectare is further exacerbated where HIV prevalence rates are relatively high, particularly in the low- and medium rainfall zones of the country (agro-ecological regions I and...

This paper summarizes empirical results from a synthesis of a set of country studies undertaken by Michigan State University and partner institutions in five African countries, each of which is based upon large-scale rural household surveys. The results demonstrate that the post-death land/labor...