Pobreza e desnutrição de crianças no Brasil: diferenças regionais e entre áreas urbanas e rurais

Resumo

Data from the 1989 Brazilian National Health and Nutrition Survey are used to analyze the relation between per capita family income and the height for age Z-score (HAZ) for less than 5 years old children. Using individual data it is shown that even after considering the effect of income, there are important differences among regions and between rural and urban areas. Absolute poverty measures and the proportion of children with HAZ below -2 are computed for each of 33 areas of Brazil. A regression analysis shows that poverty measures computed using a constant poverty line explain the differences between rural and urban areas in the prevalence of children malnutrition. This result indicates that the use of the same poverty line for urban and rural areas does not determine an overestimation of rural poverty. Even after considering the effect of poverty, the prevalence of malnutrition among children in the North and Northeast regions is greater than in the other Brazilian regions.