Abstract

ECHARRI CANOVAS, Carlos Javier. Socio-economic stratification and maternal and child health in Mexico. Pap. poblac [online]. 2004, vol.10, n.39, pp.95-128. ISSN 2448-7147.

The objective of this article is the study of children's health in Mexico, through an analysis centred on social differentiation, maternal and child health care and family structure. It is argued and sustained that due to the characteristics of available data and mortality levels, it becomes necessary to pay more attention to the analysis of determinants, rather than health indicators. An important methodological aspect is that socio-economic strata act as intermediate variables both, for bio-demographic ones - age, equality and spacing- and for health care, wherefore the analysis of child mortality cannot be carried out with usual analysis tools, like linear regressions, as the assumption of the explicative variables' independence would be violated. After analysing separately each social stratum, it can be seen that the effects of the variables taken into account are totally different. Even if this could be due to scarce number of events, it reinforces our hypothesis that it should be proceeded to separate analysis in each stratum, paying more attention to health care, as the main explicative variable.

Keywords : Mexico; socio-economic strata; health care; infant mortality; family structure.

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