Estimating the welfare gains from antiretroviral therapy in Sub-Saharan Africa

Since the start of the century, many countries in Sub-Saharan Africa have experienced large gains in life expectancy and average consumption levels. Around the same time, an unprecedented international eort has taken place to combat HIV/AIDS mortality with the expansion of anti-retroviral therapy (ART) across many of the hardest hit countries. These drugs have been shown to halt the progression of HIV and onset of AIDS. In this paper, I estimate the impact of ART on average welfare over time in 42 countries using the equivalent consumption approach. I decompose the change in welfare to isolate the relative contribution of ART-driven improvements in life expectancy and consumption. Overall, the results indicate that ART has played a key role in improving welfare in many SSA countries, accounting for around one fth of total welfare growth in SSA between 2000 and 2017. In those countries most aected by HIV/AIDS, this gure rises to almost half. Moreover, the estimates suggest that average welfare in some countries would have declined over time in the absence of the ART expansion