Only when the benefits of investing in AIDS prevention (longer life) are bigger than the cost (less sex). Emily Oster presents her research on AIDS, showing that everything we know about AIDS is wrong. My favorite part of the video is when she shows that AIDS prevention efforts fail in countries with high malaria rates. In these countries, life expectancies are so low so that investment in AIDS prevention (less sex to gain a longer life) doesn't pay off (negative NPV) because you are likely to die of malaria even if you don't get AIDS.
This is interesting. I am curious how this relates to export based economies such as Russia and China. For example, shouldn't China be experiencing the same AIDS/export correlation? There is a presence of AIDS in China and there is increased urbanization. This leads me to believe that there will be an increase in AIDS overall in China but I have not read of this occurring. I can assume that no one has tracked this, but I think it is relevant.
ReplyDeleteIn regards to NPV/AIDS analysis, should we focus on eliminating malaria before we tackle funding for AIDS? If we prevent malaria, do we increase the value of life in Afria?