The study, conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and presented at the International AIDS Conference in Vienna, found that poor heterosexuals are twice as likely to get HIV than their more affluent counterparts.
Scientists focused on heterosexuals in 23 “high-poverty” neighborhoods who were neither bisexual nor drug users but were living below the poverty line — which was $10,000 or less when the study was conducted in 2007. Two percent (or 1 in 42) of the study’s 9,000 participants were HIV positive. Surprisingly, people living in the same neighborhood above the poverty line had less instances of HIV infection — about 1 in 83.
Scientists believe this may be because people living in low-income neighborhoods live among a higher population of people who are also infected.
“It’s epidemiological bad luck,” said director of HIV/AIDS Prevention for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Dr, Jonathan Mermin. “I’m in a community where when I meet a new (sexual) partner, the chance that they would have HIV is much higher than if I were wealthy and living in another geographical area,” he added.
“You talk about ‘Can we decrease the HIV burden in the United States?’ I would say, ‘What can we do to decrease poverty in the United States?'”