OBJECTIVES: According to the World Bank, increasing global funding to eradicate HIV in developing countries has not been successful as newly-diagnosed HIV cases continue to emerge. Given the widespread presence of this disease in the developing world, this research aims to establish the link between education and macro-level socioeconomic variables with HIV prevalence in the United States of America, India, South Africa, and Russia. METHODS: Socioeconomic variables were extracted from the World Development Indicators dataset of the World Bank Data Repository. The HIV variables were identified from the surveillance reports of individual countries and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). A time series analysis was performed for the study countries from 2000 to 2009. A multivariate regression analysis was conducted and a significance level was established at a p-value ≤ 0.05. A panel analysis was performed to examine the impact of independent variables on HIV prevalence. RESULTS: These results provide a comparison between the study countries to determine if there is a common factor that countries could put resources into to combat HIV prevalence. For example, the regression analysis demonstrated that in India, women’s share of the population living with HIV had an inverse correlation with school enrollments (p<0.05) at three levels (preprimary, primary, and secondary) for both genders. Furthermore, HIV incidence is inversely correlated to adjusted net national income per capita (p<0.0001) and is directly correlated to tuberculosis detection rates (p<0.0001). Likewise, HIV prevalence in persons aged 15 to 49 years had a direct correlation with the total unemployment rate (p=0.0090). These results are consistent with the literature. CONCLUSIONS: This research provides an important indication of which macro-level factors can be addressed to curb HIV in the developing world. Additionally, this research can potentially provide an important indication of how best to employ limited resources.