Dissertation Research: Gender, Child Health, and Urban Poverty in Northeastern Brazil

本项目涉及匹兹堡大学人类学学生的论文研究。 该研究调查了巴西城市贫困家庭成员如何通过向儿童分配食物、水和医疗保健来促进儿童健康。 该项目将研究如何将护理方面的差异，特别是按性别划分的差异解释为对更大的社会经济制约因素的反应。 学生将研究巴西亚马逊河流域一个新定居地区的社区，在那里，快速的城市化创造了一类几乎无法获得重要资源的人。 有待检验的假设是，对男童和女童的不同评价扭曲了资源流动，在儿童健康方面产生了明显的结果。 使用密集的访谈和参与者观察以及家庭和护理的具体措施，24小时活动回忆和收入问卷调查的人种学技术，学生将试图检查的“黑匣子”，这是家庭内部资源分配的工作。 这项研究很重要，因为它扩展了我们关于世界上这个至关重要地区的专业知识库，并提供了有关影响儿童健康的基本过程的信息：家庭内资源流动的动态。 我们对儿童健康的具体原因的认识的进步，将导致从这个案例研究将是有价值的规划者和决策者关注儿童的一般健康状况。

This project involves the dissertation research of an anthropology student from the University of Pittsburgh. The research investigates how members of poor, urban households in Brazil produce child health through the differential allocation of food, water, and health care to children. The project will examine how variations in care, especially by gender, can be explained as responses to larger socio-economic constraints. The student will study a community in a newly settled area of Amazonian Brazil where rapid urbanization has created a class of persons with little access to important resources. The hypothesis to be tested is that differential valuation of male and female children skews the flow of resources with results apparent in child health. Using ethnographic techniques of intensive interviews and participant-observation as well as surveys of households and specific measures of nursing, 24-hour activity recalls and income questionnaires, the student will attempt to examine the workings of the `black box` that is intra-household resource allocation. This research is important because it expands our store of expertise about this critically important region of the world as well as provides information about a basic process affecting child health: the dynamics of resource flows within households. Advances in our knowledge of the specific causes of child health that will result from this case study will be valuable to planners and decision makers concerned about children's general health status.