Workshop on Human Potential (Alicia Menendez, Harris School)

Alicia Menendez, Research Associate (Associate Professor), Harris School of Public Policy, will present, "The Economic Consequences of Death in South Africa.”

Alicia S. Menendez is a Research Associate (Associate Professor) in the Harris School and the Department of Economics, and a Principal Research Scientist at the National Opinion Research Center (NORC). Her research interests include development economics, education and health, labor markets, and household behavior. She is particularly interested in Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa. She is currently engaged in a project that collects and analyzes data on individuals' health and economic status, the costs associated with illness and death, and the impact of adult deaths on households and children's well being in a series of household surveys in South Africa.

Abstract:
Using data from a demographic surveillance area in South Africa, we find that households in which members die of AIDS are systematically poorer than other households. The timing of the lower SES observed for these households and their AIDS deaths suggests that the socioeconomic gradient in AIDS mortality is being driven primarily by poor households being at higher risk for AIDS, rather than AIDS impoverishing the households. Following a death, households that experienced an AIDS death are observed being poorer still but the additional socioeconomic loss is very similar to the loss observed from all other types of death in the field site. We investigate possible mechanisms by which death leads to lower socioeconomic status for the household, and find that while funeral expenses born by the deceased’s household can explain some of the impoverishing effects of death in the household, loss of a employed member cannot.

The Workshop/Working Group on Human Potential is one of the core intellectual activities of the Center for Human Potential and Public Policy. It is an interdisciplinary forum for graduate students, post docs, and faculty whose work concerns behavior, health, and well-being across the lifespan and the ways in which technology and public policy shape human potential and achievement. The Workshop/Working group has active members in the areas of the social, behavioral, health, and policy sciences.

The Workshop/Working Group on Human Potential alternates between two types of sessions. Not only do we regularly invite outside speakers for a traditional "workshop" presentation, but we also provide a forum for faculty, post-doctoral fellows, and graduate students to present research-in-progress in order to receive critical and constructive feedback.