Too Poor to Care? The Salience of AIDS in Africa

Sub-Saharan Africa is the part of the world that is most severely affected by HIV/AIDS. Yet, surveys of attitudes to AIDS across African countries show that voters do not attach great importance to the issue. This paper argues that the low salience of AIDS is in large part a result of the widespread poverty that exists on the continent, which means that AIDS is crowded out by other issues. Using multilevel regressions, results from four waves of survey data support the hypothesis that poverty significantly affects the salience of AIDS as a political issue at the individual level.