Poverty, Employment and HIV/AIDS in Trinidad and Tobago

This paper examines the strength and direction of the association between poverty and HIV/AIDS in Trinidad and Tobago. A Granger Causality test and a Vector Auto-Regression model were used to ascertain whether the traditionally assumed bicausal relationship between poverty and HIV/AIDS holds for Trinidad and Tobago. The test results suggest a two-way link between female unemployment and the incidence of HIV/AIDS. Moreover, HIV/AIDS impacts on the level of overall employment but the reverse impact is not indicated. These results point to a negative impact of HIV/AIDS on socioeconomic status which is slower than the reverse relationship. In other words, when one is unemployed and poor, one is more vulnerable to contracting HIV/AIDS and the period within which one may fall prey to the disease is shorter than the time it would take for a non-poor person who contracts the disease to become unemployed and poor as a result of the disease.