Los comportamientos de salud correlacionados y la transición de la mortalidad en América Latina

Resumen

During the 1980s mortality continued to decline throughout Latin America despite a 8.9%' fall in real per capita income.Primary health care usage continued to increase despite its rising cost.I investigate these counterintuitive results by examining two demographically important health behaviours, child immunization and maternal care, in two countries, Colombia and Paraguay.I construct hierarchical datasets by matching individual and household data from 1990 Demographic and Health surveys to local ministry of health immunization coverage data and recent census data.I use the proportion of older children in the index municipio who have immunization cards and the proportion whose mothers used prenatal services as lagged social interaction measures and add them to multilevel m odels.The social interaction m easures significantly increase the probability an individual child was fully immunized and her delivery professionally attended.Moreover, the social interaction measures reduce the cluster and municipio-level random effects in the cases of immunization in Paraguay and attended delivery in both countries.I use my results and reported coverage and mortality data from the countries to show that social interaction effects operating through immunization and delivery care * T h is re se a rc h w as sp o n so re d by th e N a tio n a l In stitu te o f C h ild H e a lth a n d H u m an D evelopm ent (U nited States) (H D 07014), the P an-A m erican H ealth O rganization (PAHO) (H D P /H D R /H S