Infant mortality and gender in brazil: An investigation using updated statistics

Abstract

Various studies reveal that male mortality is higher than female mortality among children in Brazil. Recent studies have also re-vealed a reduction in excess male infant mortality in the last few years. However, little is known about which factors are associated with this phe-nomenon. Since male infants are generally more susceptible, a potential hypothesis is that an im-provement in income levels and pre-and post-na-tal healthcare have a greater impact on reducing male infant mortality. Thus, the scope of this article was to analyze how these factors affect infant mortality in Brazil. For the creation of the model, data for the period from 1996 to 2014 from Brazilian states were utilized. The results indicate that average income, low birth weight, the number of prenatal visits and the fertility rate, are im-portant factors associated with infant mortality in the country. In general, the impact of these vari-ables is greater in the mortality of male children, which would indicate that the higher susceptibil-ity of male children requires greater care from the parents and the health authorities. Furthermore, future studies could analyze the importance of breastfeeding on infant mortality and gender in Brazil, in order to verify the impact of breastfeed-ing on the reduction of infant deaths.