Urbanization and Survival: Shaping the Rise in Life Expectancy across Latin America

Catalina Torres, Facultad de Ciencias Sociales Universidad de la República, Uruguay
jenny garcia, Institut National d'Études Démographiques (INED)

The population of Latin America and the Caribbean increased tenfold between the beginning of the 20th century and the first decades of the twenty-first: from 60 million in 1900, it reached 622 million people in 2018. Most of this impressive growth has been concentrated in the urban areas. Urbanization came along with increasing survival in Latin America. Urban areas have historically held an advantage in terms of development in the region, which has been notorious throughout the evolution of mortality patterns. In fact, the health transition first appeared in the cities. However, the complex interplay between the urbanization process and the advance of the health transition in Latin America remains insufficiently understood. In this context, we aim to disentangle the contributions of the urbanization process to the increase in life expectancy across Latin American countries. We hypothesize that this increase has been highly dependable on the changes in the share of the population living in the largest cities. Preliminary findings for a recent period show that part of the life expectancy increase in some countries is driven by changes in the distribution of the population between spatial-groups.

Keywords: Mortality and Longevity, Decomposition analysis, Civil Registration and Vital Statistics

See extended abstract.