Abstract

This article by Hugo Behm, written in 1979, analyzes the determinants of mortality in Latin America. It was originally presented in the United Nations/World Health Organization meeting on the "Socio-Economic Determinants and Consequences of Mortality" held in Mexico City from June 19 to 25, 1979 and published in Revista Centroamericana de Ciencias de la Salud, No. 12, in 1979. This re-edition, as part of the section Foundational Texts, aims to honor the memory of the author and recover a text pioneering in its effort to demonstrate how the mortality differentials between countries and between different regions within the same country, as well as urban/rural differentials, can be explained by structural social and economic inequality which create mortality "excesses" by ethnicity, age group and social class.