Primarily a disease of young adults, Acquired Immuno Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) imposes economic costs that could be devastatingly high in the long run by undermining the transmission of human capital the main driver of long-run economic growth across generations. AIDS makes it harder for...

Most existing estimates of the macroeconomic costs of AIDS, as measured by the reduction in the growth rate of gross domestic product, are modest. For Africa - the continent where the epidemic has hit the hardest - they range between 0.3 and 1.5 percent annually. The reason is that these...

Most existing estimates of the macroeconomic costs of AIDS, as measured by the reduction in the growth rate of gross domestic product, are modest. For Africa-the continent where the epidemic has hit the hardest-they range between 0.3 and 1.5 percent annually. The reason is that these estimates...

This paper studies the formation of human capital and its transmission across generations when premature adult mortality is a salient feature of the demographic landscape, either permanently or in the form of a long-period wave that follows the outbreak of an epidemic. We establish several...

An AIDS epidemic threatens Ethiopia with a long wave of premature adult mortality, and thus with an enduring setback to capital formation and economic growth. The authors develop a two-sector model with three overlapping generations and intersectorally mobile labor, in which young adults...

What is the right balance among policy interventions in order to ensure economic growth over the long run when an epidemic causes heavy mortality among young adults? We argue that, in general, policies to combat the disease and promote education must be concentrated, in certain ways, on some...

This paper studies the formation of human capital and its transmission across generations when premature adult mortality is a salient feature of the demographic landscape, either permanently or in the form of a long-period wave that follows the outbreak of an epidemic. We establish several...