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

本项目涉及匹兹堡大学人类学专业的一名学生的学位论文研究。这项研究调查了巴西贫穷的城市家庭成员如何通过为儿童分配不同的食物、水和医疗保健来实现儿童健康。该项目将研究如何将护理方面的差异，特别是按性别的差异解释为对更大的社会经济限制的反应。这名学生将在巴西亚马逊地区的一个新定居地区学习一个社区，在那里，快速的城市化创造了一个几乎无法获得重要资源的阶层。需要检验的假设是，对男性和女性儿童的不同估值扭曲了资源流动，在儿童健康方面取得了明显的结果。学生将使用密集访谈和参与者观察、家庭调查和具体护理措施、24小时活动回忆和收入问卷等人种学技术，试图检查家庭内部资源分配的工作原理。这项研究之所以重要，是因为它扩大了我们对世界上这一极其重要的区域的专业知识储备，并提供了有关影响儿童健康的一个基本过程的信息：家庭内部资源流动的动态。这一案例研究将导致我们对儿童健康具体原因的了解取得进展，这对关心儿童总体健康状况的规划者和决策者将是有价值的。

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.