The Infant Mortality Decline and Its Relation with Urban Infrastructure Services: A Spatial Analysis in Small Areas of Brazil

Pedro Andrade , IFCH - Unicamp
Everton E. C. Lima, IFCH - UNICAMP
Tirza Aidar, Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP)

Since the 1930s Brazil has experienced a significant reduction in infant mortality, which occurs as result of multiple factors, especially related with increase in the access to urban infrastructure services like piped water, electricity, sewage system and garbage collection. Considering these aspects, this paper aims to characterize the process of infant mortality decline in Brazilian microregions, and analyze its relationship with the provision of these urban services. We use data from 2013 Human Development Atlas (UNDP) and the Demographic Census and apply multivariate and spatial regression analysis techniques in 558 Brazilian microregions from 1991 to 2010. We found that the process of infant mortality decline is regionally heterogeneous and it followed the path of expansion in access to basic urban infrastructure. In addition, in very recent periods, electricity has gained an important role to explain the persistent spatial heterogeneity in terms of infant mortality.

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 Presented in Session 14. Infant and Child Mortality