经济发展、危险行为与艾滋病传播

Economic Development, Risky Behavior and Aids Epidemic

经济发展通过影响人们的危险(易感)行为来影响艾滋病的传播。本文提出的一个简单两时期代际模型表明:随着经济发展,个人财富的增加提高人们对于未来生活的预期,这将抑制人们的危险行为;但经济发展带来的应对疾病能力的提高又会增加人们的类似行为。因此,经济发展对于艾滋病传播的最终影响具有不确定性。本文在此基础上对中国各地区的艾滋病发病率进行检验,确实发现经济发展对艾滋病传播的影响不显著,个人财富确实抑制了艾滋病的流行,但未发现公共医疗水平提高对于艾滋病传播有显著正影响。

Economic development can potentially affect the AIDS epidemic by casting influence on individual＇ s risky （or susceptible） behavior. In this paper, we consider a simple two-period OLG model and it is shown that as the economy grows, agents tend to reduce their risky behavior since future＇ s life becomes more attractive due to the increase in their wealth; however, they may also increase their risky activities since the probability of contracting with AIDS is reduced by more advanced medical technologies. As a result, the ultimate effect of economic development on AIDS epidemic is ambiguous. We then test the model results using China＇ s provincial data of the incidence rate of AIDS. We indeed find economic development does not significantly affect the AIDS epidemic, while an increase in individual＇ s wealth reduces the incidence rate of AIDS. However, we do not find any strong evidence supporting positive effects of public health on AIDS.