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The focus of this paper is to assess the effect of HIV/AIDS on household healthcare expenditure and income by comparing HIV-affected households with non-affected ones. Primary data was collected using structured and pretested questionnaires in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, in the period between January and February 2015. A total of 240 households were interviewed, 149 of which were HIV-affected households and the remaining 91 were non-affected. Since the sample of HIV-affected households was non-random and there is a strong risk of selection biases because of pre-existing differences between the two groups, direct comparisons of the outcomes may be misleading. This is because the existence of confounding factors creates biases in the estimation of average treatment effects on the outcome variables. To reduce this bias and to control confounding factors, propensity score matching methods were employed.

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Abreha, Solomon
I am a PhD candidate in Methods and Models for economics decisions at the University of Insubria, Varese, Italy. I did my master´s degree in Health Economics and Management from Bologna University. My research interest is Health Economics specially in health technology assessment, health impact assessment, healthcare evaluation, health inequalities and decision making.

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