The environment as a determinant of child mortality among migrants in frontier areas of Para and Rondonia, Brazil, 1980

This article examines child mortality as an indicator of the quality of life among migrants living in Brazilian Amazonia in 1980. I focus on migrants in the frontier states of Para and Rondonia, which experienced rapid settlement during the 1970s. The key question here is the effect of settlement location on child mortality rates. While Rondonia had lower ratios of population per public health establishments and personnel than Para, Rondonia nonetheless exhibited a higher malaria prevalence in 1980. I therefore attribute locational differences in child mortality to environmental factors important to malaria transmission rather than to health care infrastructure. The findings from multivariate regression analysis show that net of the effects of human capital, migration history and migrant living standards, settling in Para rather than Rondonia resulted in significantly lower rates of child mortality These findings suggest that environmental factors coinciding with location of frontier settlement had important consequences for the living standards of migrants in the Brazilian Amazon.