ASPIRES Evidence Brief Series: Individual Savings and HIV Outcomes

Economic factors are linked to HIV risk behaviors, as well as outcomes, at every stage of the HIV care and treatment cascade. The ASPIRES project conducted an extensive review of the literature on these linkages and produced an evidence brief series highlighting how different household economic strengthening (HES) interventions may affect HIV prevention, testing and linkage to care, retention in care, and antiretroviral therapy (ART) adherence.

This brief focuses on individual savings interventions, which include formal or informal individual savings accounts in which participants save their own money, as well as individual matched savings interventions. Matched savings interventions incentivize participants to save by contributing an additional amount of money to their savings account once participants deposit their own money. Group savings interventions, in which small groups of individuals save together and make loans to group members through pooled savings, are discussed in another brief in this series.