Impact of Hiv/aids-related Mortality on Rural Farm Households in Zambia: Implications for Poverty Reduction Strategies

Fully two decades since the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Africa has been characterized as a major economic development crisis, there remains a dearth of micro-level information on the impacts of the disease on rural African households and their responses, although this is fortunately beginning to change. This paper uses nationally representative longitudinal survey data on 5,420 rural farm households in Zambia, to measure the impacts of prime-age (PA) adult mortality on crop production and cropping patterns, household size, livestock and non-farm income, taking into account the probable endogeneity of prime-age mortality. The paper extends the differencein-difference approach used by Yamano and Jayne (2004) by controlling for initial (pre-death) household conditions that may influence the severity of the impacts of adult mortality. Using prior death and age group-specific drought shocks as instruments for prime-age death between 2001 and 2004, the Hausman-Wu chi square test for endogeneity shows that indeed death variables are endogenous for pooled ordinary least squares (OLS) models. Differencing the time-invariant unobserved household characteristics largely addressed the endogeneity problem. Based on these difference models, we report the impact of premature prime-age mortality on rural households. The main findings include: first, irrespective of gender and/or position in the household of the deceased person, household size declines by a factor less than one member suggesting that afflicted households are partially successful in replenishing their family size. Second, in response to the death of a male household head, poorer households have substantially greater difficulties in coping than non-poor households, which are likely to almost fully restore household size to former pre-death levels. Third, the effects of PA death on farm production are sensitive to the gender and position in the household of the deceased. For example, death of a PA male resulted in an 11% decline in total land cultivated whilst death of a PA female resulted in a 3% decline of cultivated land and the death of male heads/spouses resulted in a 20% reduction in land cultivated. Fourth, in contrast to the general hypothesis that households experiencing prime-age death cope with the reduction in family size by switching to labor saving crops such as roots and tubers, our findings indicate no clear pattern of shifts to labor-saving crops. The death of non-spouse females in the household is actually associated with a 5% decline in area under roots and tubers. Fifth, poorer households experience a 13% decline in gross value of output when the male household head dies while non-poor households are able to maintain or even increase their gross value of crop production since they are more able to attract men and boys when a core males dies. Seventh, the value of cattle assets appear to suffer greatly from the death of a PA male head of household whilst the impacts on the other PA death are negative but not statistically significant. Last but not least, there is strong evidence to suggest that afflicted households liquidate small animals to mitigate the impact of PA death. Overall, the results of this study question the usefulness of a homogeneous conceptualization of “afflicted households,” especially in the context of proposals for targeted assistance, technology development, and other programs/policies. In most cases the gender and household position of the deceased appear to strongly condition the effects on the household. The death of a male