A Test of the New Variant Famine Hypothesis: Panel Survey Evidence from Zambia

The new variant famine (NVF) hypothesis postulates than HIV/AIDS is eroding rural livelihoods and making agrarian communities more sensitive and less resilient to drought and other schocks NVF has become a high profile but controversal part of the literature on HIV/AIDS and food crises, in part because it has not been subjected to detailed empirical testing In this paper, an econometric analysis using panel data from Zambia indicates that increases in district-level HIV prevelance rates over the period 1991/92 to 2004/05 have had variable but generally negative impacts on agriculture production NVF-type outcomes, defined narrowly as negative interactions between HIV/AIDS and drought, are more evident in areas of low rainfall, high land-to-labor ratios, and high HIV prevalence levels These findings provide guarded support for the NVF hypothesis (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd All rights reserved