Labour Participation of People Living with the Human Immunodeficiency Virus: Is There Any Difference Between HIV-Positive People and the General Population?
The data used is from the Hospital Survey on HIV-AIDS and the Labour Force Survey from 2001 to 2010 in Spain. Several probit models were used to analyse the likelihood of being employed and the main factors that affect labour participation for HIV-positive people. Moreover, an identical analysis was performed to carry out a comparison of the employment rate of HIV-positive people vs the general population during the period under analysis. In addition to this, several specific models categorized into different subgroups (gender, education, source of infection, stage of disease and level of defences) were also considered.
The main factors affecting the labour participation of HIV-positive people were age, gender, education, source of infection, level of defences and stage of disease. HIV-positive people were 19% less likely to be employed than the general population. In terms of subgroups, the highest difference in labour participation were between; i) those HIV-positive individuals with low defences vs the general population (33% less likely), and ii) between those HIV-positive individuals who were infected through drug use vs the general population (31% less likely).
The results obtained showed that HIV-positive people were significantly less likely to be in employment compared with the general population. Education, source of infection and level of defences thus seem to be the main factors on which policy-makers should focus programmes and strategies.