Factors Influencing Food Expenditure Patterns Among HIV/AIDS Affected Households in Lagos State of Nigeria.

In recent years, the HIV/AIDS pandemic has become a name to reckon with in Nigeria. The fact that the illness mostly affect age group 15-49 years is tragically worrisome. The morbidity and mortality originated from this ailment predominately reduce the capacity of infected individual/s to stay economically active and thus adversely affect food production and availability for their household. Therefore, this study investigate the factors influencing food expenditure patterns in HIV/AIDS households in Lagos State of Nigeria. Simple random sampling was adopted to select ten Local Government Areas LGAs for the study while primary data was obtained from 891 respondents using convenient sampling technique. The data was analyzed by means of descriptive statistics and logistic regression. The outcome suggests that female respondents 60 % dominate the survey while majority of the participants are petty traders. The finding also shows that catastrophic health expenditure was highest among two major ethnic groups Hausa and Igbo . The logistic regression result indicates that difference age category, ethnic group, household members infected with HIV/AIDS, AIDS related death and remittances have negative significant impact on household food expenditure in Lagos state. Based on the findings, it is recommended that the government in her capacity should enact strategy intervention schemes that will assist affected households to maintain regular income in order to provide financial stability and support for themselves.