O comportamento da mortalidade no Rio Grande do Norte entre 1801 e 1870

Abstract

This dissertation undertook a demographic study of mortality in Rio Grande do Norte during the nineteenth century, more precisely, between 1801 and 1870. It contributes to a still scarce set of studies in Brazil that are dedicated to the pre-demographic transition. Moreover, this work represented a challenge to propose a quantitative and employment demographic analysis techniques using data that were not designed specifically for these purposes. Contextually, the nineteenth century was marked by the occurrence of epidemic diseases, mainly due to poor sanitary conditions and medical care, and that played an important role in the causes of death structure of the period. In the case of Rio Grande do Norte the literature points to infeccious diseases such as smallpox, cholera and yellow fever playing a import role along the nineteenth century. Given the inherent limitations of historical data on population and deaths count, this study applied specific demographic techniques for correction and estimation of mortality indicators. Due to the availability of population information and total deaths and age group, analyzes were conducted to six points in time (1801, 1805, 1839, 1846 and 1870). Preliminary analysis indicated that the best method for correcting the underreporting of adult mortality was the Growth Balance Brass Method (1975). To estimate child mortality, was chosen an existing mortality function, using as criteria the one closest to adult mortality function. After analyzing various levels of life tables of Coale and Demeny (1996) western model (level 6) and east (level 18), and 19 mortality functions of different countries available on the site The Human Mortality Database, the function chosen was the Iceland in 1850. So we applied the indirect standardization method to adjust the level of mortality and obtained a new mortality to the Rio Grande do Norte. It was found that the specific rate of mortality of Rio Grande do Norte showed high levels of infant mortality among children aged zero to four years and in adults there was a high mortality at ages above 50 years. Life expectancy at birth was 32.3 years, a similar estimate to what Mortara (1941) found for Brazil in 1870 (life expectancy of 32.7 years) and 1890 (life expectancy of 30.6 years). In general, the results indicate congruence between the mortality age pattern estimated (children and the elderly as the most affected) and the mortality age pattern typical of areas affected by epidemics such as registered to Rio Grande do Norte over XIX century. It is suggested that future work be deepened the study of mortality in Rio Grande do Norte, with the production of new estimates based on other documentary and census sources that seek to further specify the case of mortality of the study area in the same period pre-demographic transition.