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In the present study, based on data from nine Latin American countries, we found evidence of an association between the economic crisis and infant mortality during the last decades. The paper initially review previous studies on this issue and shows the need for a greater research focus on shorter time intervals. We then describe the deterioration and unequal conditions among the countries based on trends in selected social and economic indicators and the evolution of infant mortality rates. According to our statistical analysis, infant mortality bore an inverse association to short-term economic variations. We also found a significant and negative correlation between decreasing infant mortality rates and increasing poverty. The economic crisis displayed effects of varying intensity among the countries we analyzed, with social inequality appearing as the most probable explanatory variable.

"Uruguay can be ranked among the countries with fairly reliable vital statistics. The last population census included questions about ever-born and surviving children which allow [the derivation of] independent estimations relative to level and trends of infant and early childhood mortality. The purpose of this paper is to estimate such parameters based on 1985 Census information and compare them with those of 1975. Furthermore, particular interest is paid to the differentials which show that Uruguayan society is no longer the homogeneous society it seemed to be decades ago.... The last chapter is devoted to examining infant mortality by causes of death. This section evaluates the amount of lives that could be saved, if deaths due to exogenous factors are avoided." (SUMMARY IN ENG), (excerpt)

"This paper presents a new, continuous, version of the index of years of life lost (YLL) in the population, distinguishing different causes of death. Also, it shows the mathematical relationship between the YLL and temporary life expectancies in the discrete and continuous cases....The model is applied to the analysis of mortality of the province of Cordoba, Argentina, during 1947-1991." (SUMMARY IN ENG), (excerpt)

"This document discusses the impact of the social institutions in the childbearing experience of...families and the reproduction of...society. Despite the difficulties of empirically demonstrating the association of the macro and micro spheres, the paper presents evidence of the relationship, introducing the case of Ecuador, based on broad indices of fertility and child mortality.... The analysis utilizes the Demographic and Health Survey (DHS), individual and community questionnaire." (SUMMARY IN ENG), (excerpt)

"This paper analyzes the problems that arise when infant mortality estimates are derived through the probabilities of dying obtained from the application of the Coale-Trussell technique to the proportion of children deceased according to age of mother derived from census or survey data. These problems arise because this operation requires the acceptance of a mortality model by age." The author outlines "some criteria for the selection of the model through the use of information from Vital Statistics and surveys. Finally, it is stated that an alternative for the study of infant mortality trends is the selection of an indicator less affected by the mortality structure by age...." The problems are illustrated using data from selected countries in Latin America. (summary in ENG), (excerpt)

"During the latter part of 1986, national probability sample surveys of women of reproductive ages were carried out in... Peru and the Dominican Republic. These surveys were made as part of the Demographic Health Surveys project (DHS). In each country, one survey was conducted with the standard core questionnaire developed for DHS; the other survey was based on an experimental questionnaire. The major difference between the two questionnaires is the inclusion in the experimental one of a monthly calendar, which records pregnancies, contraceptive use, reasons for contraceptive discontinuation, breastfeeding, post-partum amenorrhea, post-partum abstinence, women's employment and place of residence for the period 1981-1986. This paper presents results from the first stage of the analysis of the Peruvian data: a comparison of basic characteristics of the two samples and an assessment of the completeness of reporting of recent births and infant and child deaths, i.e., a comparison of information in the truncated and full birth histories." (SUMMARY IN ENG), (excerpt)

In infant mortality estimates, using the Coale-Trussell procedure with information from 2 successive population censuses of a country, reveals differences in the levels for the overlapping years of periods. This paper deal with this problem using the 1974 and 1982 censuses of Ecuador. The contribution of his analysis consists in demonstrating that infant mortality in a given year--estimated from a specific age group--is a weighted average between zero mortality--women declaring no deaths among their children and mortality with a value different from zero--women declaring some child dead. The weighing values are the age structure of women according to the condition of having dead children and corrected by the mean parity of the corresponding age group. Looking at the structure--women with or without dead children--of both censuses, a strong increase in the proportion of women without dead children occurred in 1982 as compared with the proportion in 1974. In order to eliminate this lack of comparability a reweighing was introduced in the 1982 information. New estimates were obtained, and these are much closer to the estimates obtained from the 1974 census.