Rural to Urban Labor Migration, Maternal HIV Prevalence, and Life Changes among the Maasai of the Ngorongoro District of Tanzania

Jelena Cali, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Rural to urban labor migration among the Maasai population in the Ngorongoro District of Tanzania is engendering changes in the social, economic, and disease structure of nonmigrating spouses. Using data from the first and third surveys of the 2002-2004 Ngorongoro Health Survey, logistic regression models will be run to assess: 1) the impact of labor migration on HIV prevalence and 2) the association of labor migration with various measures for the quality of life for mothers and children. Spatial descriptive analysis will further elucidate patterns in labor migration and HIV prevalence through mapping of the clinic sites used in the survey overlaid by spatial raster data of local transportation routes, elevation data, and land cover data. The impacts of labor migration on subsistence patterns, social dynamics, and disease prevalence within communities may have increasing negative impacts on maternal and child health and lifestyle.