Socioeconomic Differences in the Impact of HIV Infection on Workforce Participation in France in the Era of Highly Active Antiretroviral Therapy

In the current study, the authors "sought to measure the difference in employment rates between HIV-seropositive and HIV-seronegative persons and to establish whether this difference varied according to the HIV-infected persons' socioeconomic position as defined by education level."

The researchers pulled data from the VESPA study, a large cross-sectional nationally representative survey of 2,932 HIV-positive patients in France. With the French general population as the reference, age-, gender-, nationality-, and education-standardized employment rates were estimated. Difference in employment rates with the general population were tallied overall and according to education level.

The overall employment rate among HIV-infected patients diagnosed before 1994 was 25 percent lower (95 percent confidence interval [CI]=16 percent, 32 percent) compared with that of the general population. For HIV-infected patients diagnosed after 1994, the rate was 9 percent lower (95 percent CI=5 percent, 16 percent). Patients with low education levels had a significantly higher employment rate difference compared with the general population. There was no difference in the employment rate of highly educated HIV patients diagnosed after 1994 to that of the general population.

"HIV infection was associated with decreased workforce participation among those with a low education level but not among highly educated individuals," the researchers concluded.

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