AIDS and % Below Poverty Line
Even though the correlation coefficient between percent of people living below the poverty line and the AIDS rate is a startling -0.409270735, which doesn’t make sense considering the fact that globally, poverty is associated with AIDS, it actually does suggest that, with a few exceptions, the richer the populace of a region, the greater the time they have to engage in risky sexual behaviors (table 3, graph 2, map 3).
Greater Accra, Ghana’s most developed region (table 5) has just 5% of its people living below the poverty line (table 3) but it also has the third highest AIDS rate in the country. This is so because by virtue of the fact that it is the most developed region in the country, opinions on sex are much more liberal than in other parts of the country. However, because AIDS awareness education is greatest in this region (even a 6 year old knows what AIDS is) and because a lot more of its populace is literate (this is inferred from the data on percent urbanization), it has a relatively lower AIDS rate compared to the Eastern Region. The same can be said for the Ashanti Region, the second most developed region in the country (table 5). However, Ashanti has a much greater population, thus resulting in a higher AIDS rate. Central Region on the other hand has a relatively high rate, considering the fact that Western Region has about 300,000 more people than Central does but they both have virtually the same AIDS rates (table 2).
Due to the fact that a huge chunk of Ghana’s tourism industry is located in the Central region, it is not at all surprising that the region has such high rates. After all, wherever tourists can be found, prostitutes will definitely be around…somewhere.