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UCLA Electronic Theses and Dissertations UCLA UCLA Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title Growing Taller, yet Falling Short: Policy, Health, and Living Standards in Brazil, 1850-1950. Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/7nn3b9g6 Author Franken, Daniel W. Publication Date 2016 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Los Angeles Growing Taller, yet Falling Short: Policy, Health, and Living Standards in Brazil, 1850-1950 A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in History by Daniel William Franken 2016 ! © Copyright by Daniel William Franken 2016 ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Growing Taller, yet Falling Short: Policy, Health, and Living Standards in Brazil, 1850-1950 by Daniel William Franken Doctor of Philosophy in History University of California, Los Angeles, 2016 Professor William R. Summerhill, Chair The emergence of regional inequities and the genesis of modern economic growth in Brazil have remained shrouded by a dearth of historical evidence. Although quantitative scholars have revealed the efficacy of the First Republic (1889-1930) in fomenting economic progress, the extent to which Brazil’s early economic growth fostered improvements in health remains unclear. My dissertation fills this void in scholarship by relying on hitherto untapped archival sources with data on human stature—a reliable metric for health and nutritional status. Heights offer an excellent source of knowledge regarding human development for Brazil in the 1850-1950 period—an era of deep social, political, and economic transformations. My analysis centers heavily on a large (n≈17,000), geographically- comprehensive series compiled from military inscription files, supplemented by an ancillary dataset drawn from passport records (n≈6,000). This dissertation also integrates ! ii! reports of the Rockefeller Foundation’s International Health Board (IHB), which spearheaded rural health campaigns in Brazil targeting hookworm and malaria in the 1910s and 1920s. This thesis details the inadequacies of traditional approaches to human development for Brazil in the nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. I rely on regression analyses to estimate the secular trends in height, consider alternative hypotheses, and assess selection biases. Venturing beyond conventional methods of historical anthropometrics, I endeavor to identify causal forces behind the observed patterns with historical climate and geographic data used to proxy for the virulence of the disease environment. I also utilize statistics on health expenditures and mortality rates in order to contextualize the observed height patterns. I document inferior heights in the North and Northeast that predated the advent of industrialization. At the national level, my findings reveal a 3-centimeter stature increase from 1880 to 1910, a growth rate commensurate with that observed in more industrialized economies in the latter-twentieth century. In the South and Southeast, I argue that increased real income and public-health interventions explain the earlier upward trend in heights, while rural sanitary reforms were most important in the North and Northeast, where heights remained stagnant until the 1910 decade and diseases such as hookworm and malaria were most rampant. I show that, although rural sanitation in the early- twentieth century improved health conditions, administrative shortcomings hemmed down the rollout of modern health institutions and continued to plague the nation. ! iii! The dissertation of Daniel William Franken is approved. Dora Luisa Costa Mary A. Yeager William R. Summerhill, Committee Chair University of California, Los Angeles 2016 ! iv! Table of Contents Introduction..........................................................................................................................1 Ch. 1. Bota Acima? Reframing the Living Standard Debate in Modern Brazil...................9 Ch. 2. Measuring Living Standards: Heights and their Determinants...............................40 Ch. 3. The Brazilian Military and the AHEX Dataset.......................................................62 Ch. 4. Temporal Height Trends of the AHEX Dataset......................................................99 Ch. 5. Trends in Height of Passport Bearers....................................................................134 Ch. 6. Discussion and Comparison of Brazil’s Height Trends........................................152 Ch. 7. Brazil’s Hookworm Hurdle...................................................................................190 Conclusion.......................................................................................................................209 Bibliography....................................................................................................................214 ! v! List of Tables No. Title Page. 1.1 Inflow of Immigrants to Brazil by Sending Country, 1884-1939 21 1.2 Decomposition of Population Growth in Brazil, 1850-1970 31 1.3 Estimates of Life Expectancy at Birth 32 1.4 Foreign Exports from Brazil 39 3.1 Analysis of Digit Preference in the AHEX Sample 77 3.2 Ages of Soldiers by Recruitment Regime 80 3.3 Common Occupations Amongst Soldiers 83 3.4 Sample Occupational Distribution vs. Census Statistics 86 3.5 Sample Regional Distribution vs. Census Statistics 89 3.6 AHEX Sample Statistics 95 3.7 Regional Distribution: AHEX Sample by Recruitment Period 97 3.8 Reported Skin Colors 98 4.1 Infant Mortality Rates by Race in Rio de Janeiro 104 4.2 Sample-Selection Diagnostics: Regression Summaries 114 4.3 Baseline Regressions: AHEX Sample 124 4.4 Robustness: Post-Conscription AHEX Sample 125 4.5 Regressions by Rural-Urban Origin: AHEX Sample 126 4.6 Truncated ML Regressions by Region 127 4.7 Interaction Regressions: Additional Variables 128 4.8 Selection Diagnostic Regressions 129-33 ! vi! 5.1 Mean Height of Passport Bearers by State 146 5.2 OLS Regressions: Passports Sample 150 5.3 Comparisons of Brazilian versus Foreign-Born Passport Carriers 151 6.1 Summary Statistics for the AHEX & CRU Subsample 184 6.2 Regression Results Relating Heights and CRU Climate Data 185 6.3 Nutrition Indicators: 1975 188 6.4 Regressions: Influence of Commodity Prices on Heights 189 7.1 Hookworm Infection Rates in Brazil 207 7.2 Hookworm Infection Rates Worldwide 208 ! vii! List of Figures No. Title Page. 1.1 Main Commodity Exports of Brazil 16 1.2 Industrial Establishments by State, 1907 18 1.3 Population by Region 19 1.4 GDP by Sector, 1900-1950 27 1.5 Infant Mortality by State, 1897 34 2.1 Determinants of Stature and Consequences 47 2.2 Malarial Ecology Risk Index by State 51 3.1 Histogram: Years of Birth (AHEX Sample) 73 3.2 Histogram of Observations by Induction Period 74 3.3 Histogram of Height Measurements by Recruitment Period 78 3.4 Racial Category by Decade of Birth 81 3.5 Occupations Amongst Soldiers 85 3.6 Regional Composition: AHEX Sample 88 3.7 Mode of Entry by Cohort of Birth 90 3.8 Literacy Status by Cohort of Birth 91 3.9 Marital Status by Cohort of Birth 93 3.10 Kernel Density Estimates 96 4.1 Average Height of AHEX Sample by Cohort of Birth 102 4.2 Mean Height by Skin Color 103 4.3 Regression Results: Baseline Model 110 4.4 Alternate Specifications with Occupational Weights 112 ! viii! 4.5 Adjusted Regressions: Robustness 117 4.6 Estimated Height by Birth Cohort and Rural-Urban Origin 118 4.7 Regression Results by Region 120 5.1 Observations by Gender and Birth Cohort: Passport Bearers 137 5.2 Distribution of Heights: Passports Sample 138 5.3 Occupational Distribution: Passport Bearers 140 5.4 Geographic Composition: Passports Sample 141 5.5 Education History of Passport Bearers 142 5.6 Mean Height by Occupational Class: Passports Sample 143 5.7 Regression Results for Trends in Height of Passports Sample 145 5.8 Boxplot of Heights by Birthplace: Foreign-Born 148 6.1 Historical Heights of Brazil in Comparison 155 6.2 International Comparisons 158 6.3 Public Health Spending Per Capita: São Paulo vs Pernambuco 165 6.4 Infant Mortality Rates in Three Cities 167 6.5 Deaths from Dysentery and Typhoid, Rio de Janeiro 169 6.6 Mortality from Malaria: São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro Cities 169 6.7 Cost of Living Index 170 6.8 Fresh Meat Consumption in Rio de Janeiro 171 6.9 Average Height by State: AHEX Sample 174 6.10 Heights by Year in the Drought Polygon 182 7.1 Hookworm Infection by State 201 7.2 Per Capital Health Spending 204 ! ix! 7.3 Age-Specific Height Trends: AHEX Sample 205 ! x! Acknowledgements Through the course of completing this dissertation, I have had the benefit of receiving crucial funding support, indispensable research assistance, insightful comments, and careful guidance from a host of individuals or groups who deserve special thanks here. I express my deepest gratitude to my advisor, William R. Summerhill, who has enthusiastically supported this endeavor from the outset. His expertise was fundamental in identifying gaps in the economic history literature on Brazil and helping to create a research agenda to address them. If it had not been for his advice, the bread and butter of this thesis, a large dataset compiled from military inscription files, may have remained unearthed in the archives. Throughout every step of the process—from assistance in securing funding to advice on structuring the final draft—Bill’s input and guidance has been instrumental. I thank him greatly for his consistent support. The other members of my doctoral
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