Are people living with HIV discriminated by the microfinance market? Evidence from Uganda

Abstract

Microfinance has considered to be the key to end world poverty by serving the poor and vulnerable. In Uganda, the microfinance market has been on a steady rise since 1980; a time when HIV prevalence peaked. When voices are questioning whether microfinances work as efficiently as supposed, organizations in Uganda claims that HIV positive people might be excluded in various ways from financial services. This paper aims to investigate if people living with HIV are being excluded from the microfinance market in Uganda. To do so, we use two OLS-models to analyze data from the Ugandan Bureau of Statistics, the Association of Microfinance Institutions of Uganda, and the U.S Agency for International Development. By analyzing the estimates on existence- and number of MFIs, HIV prevalence, control variables and regional effects, we find evidence suggesting that HIV positive people might be excluded from the microfinance market in the Central region of Uganda, but no statistical evidence from the Western, Eastern or Northern regions. But exclusion might occur in other ways that were not possible to examine statistically in this report, such as self-exclusion and stigmatization. Due to data limitation and sample size bias, we welcome further research on the topic.