I bet the statistics are assuming nothing else changes. It’s plausible to me that a society where people are generally sicker and shorter-lived will be poorer, and there will be a lot of additional deaths due to people being able to produce less stuff. It’s also conceivable that the lower population will be an advantage because of less competition for natural resources and already-existing durable goods.
Probably both tendencies will be in play. This makes prediction difficult.
The thing is countries would not really be poorer. Properly treated HIV isn’t much worse than smoking (I mean the part before lung cancer) or diabetes for most of people’s lives. Countries differ a lot on these already, without any apparent drastic differences in economic outcomes.
By the time people are already very old they might live a few years less, but they’re not really terribly productive at that point anyway.
I bet the statistics are assuming nothing else changes. It’s plausible to me that a society where people are generally sicker and shorter-lived will be poorer, and there will be a lot of additional deaths due to people being able to produce less stuff. It’s also conceivable that the lower population will be an advantage because of less competition for natural resources and already-existing durable goods.
Probably both tendencies will be in play. This makes prediction difficult.
The thing is countries would not really be poorer. Properly treated HIV isn’t much worse than smoking (I mean the part before lung cancer) or diabetes for most of people’s lives. Countries differ a lot on these already, without any apparent drastic differences in economic outcomes.
By the time people are already very old they might live a few years less, but they’re not really terribly productive at that point anyway.