Modelling social reality: limitations to measuring the impact of HIV/AIDS on rural households

Response by the authors

“…Neither do we suggest that HIV/AIDS is no longer a very serious world problem. Of course, Wouters et al. (2010) do not accuse us of this but some cursory readers may arrive at such a conclusion from this correspondence, not having read the original paper.…”

“…In their kind response to our paper (Seeley et al. 2010; Wouters et al. 2010) focus upon the point that our “research efforts showed that the predicted progressive and systematic decline did not seem to have materialized and come to the conclusion that HIV and AIDS have sometimes thrown households into disarray and poverty, but more often reduced development.” We very much welcome the opportunity to take this important discussion further and to explain our thinking with more clarity.…”

“…(2010) do not accuse us of this but some cursory readers may arrive at such a conclusion from this correspondence, not having read the original paper. We would encourage such readers to look at what we had to say there and also to read Beegle et al (2008) in which many of the queries raised by Wouters et al. (2010) are dealt with in discussions of the modelling and the resulting quantitative analysis.…”

“…The points of mild disagreement between Wouters et al. (2010) and ourselves are twofold: (i) the empirical question of “the predictions made by ample HIV impact studies in the 1980s and 1990s which foresaw progressive and systematic declines in agricultural production with dire consequences for rural livelihoods”; (ii) the conceptual, theoretical and methodological question of how and whether it would be possible to track and measure such processes rigorously.…”

“…On the first question, Wouters et al. (2010) refer to “ample HIV impact studies in the 1980s and 1990s”.…”