Microsimulation of HIV Transmission Across the Life Cycle in sub-Saharan Africa

This is parallel submission from the Population Studies Center, University of Pennsylvania, and the Center for Demography and Ecology, University of Wisconsin. The overall aim of this project is to evaluate the consequences of changes in morbidity and associated mortality in Sub-Saharan Africa for burdens on the elderly and the care of children. We combine the use of a microsimulation model and empirical data to quantify the impacts of disease burden and mortality on kin availability, health status of relevant kin, living arrangements of various types of kin, and resulting household configurations. We propose to estimate the demand for care that ailing relatives and their children place on older parents, and the availability of caregivers for children who experience the illness or death of one or both parents. A distinctive feature of this project is that we propose to perform extensive data analyses to obtain realistic input parameters for the model. We choose to focus on Malawi and South Africa, two countries with rich data sources but very different epidemiological histories, current health conditions, demographic patterns, and public health infrastructure.