Infant mortality rates are the best indicator of the disparity between socioeconomic conditions and health status in the two countries. They are also a good indication of the many hardships borne particularly by the poorer people who were the main informants for these studies. Table 2 shows that Brazilian infant mortality rates were almost double the Argentinian levels. The main causes of infant mortality were enteritis and other diarrhoeal diseases, nutritional deficiency, and lung problems. Unfortunately the economic crisis reversed the downward trend in infant mortality rates in Brazil after 1983.
Countries define poverty in different ways, making comparison difficult.
In Brazil, poverty levels are measured by the proportion of households with an income of less than two minimum wages. Using the personal income of two monthly wages as the yardstick, this came to 52.6 per cent of all households in 1980, equivalent to 55.35 per cent of the total population or 64.7 per cent of the economically active population. In Argentina, people arc considered poor when certain of their basic needs are unsatisfied. In spite of the diverse methodologies and measurements, it is apparent that there were more poor people in Brazil than in Argentina, as some of the specific evidence presented below will indicate. This was the environment in which the two studies were undertaken to investigate transformations in relationships within households and to analyse how these are influenced by changes in industrialization in developing countries.