Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 1998. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
Chicago Tribune, August 28, 1998
The finding comes from a seven-year study that looked at HIV tests for 350,000 youths in the federal Jobs Corps program, which provides job training to poor youths and high school dropouts.
Researchers found the infection rate among women 16 to 21 years old was 50 percent higher than that of men in the same group. The highest rates of infection were among black women: Five out of every 1,000 are infected with HIV.
"We are continuing to see that the face of the epidemic is changing to populations that are more economically disadvantaged or among racial and ethnic minorities and difficult-to-reach populations," said George Lemp, director of the AIDS research program for the University of California.
In the one bit of good news, the study reported that the overall rate of infection among all youths declined from 1990 to 1996, the period during which the study was conducted.
Researchers suggested the difference in the HIV rates between the sexes was because young women are more likely to have sex with older partners, who are more likely to have HIV than younger men.
As the study showed, women in the 16 to 18 age bracket are being infected at more than twice the rate of men the same bracket--2.4 per 1,000 compared with 1.1 per 1,000--while infection rates for men and women 19 to 21 are roughly equal.
Experts said the data show that traditional HIV-prevention programs are not enough to halt the virus' spread among the poor.
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