Читать книгу Demographic Dynamics and Development - Yves Charbit - Страница 24

The first phase of the Latin American demographic transition began at the end of the 19th century, when mortality declined in countries with high European immigration (Argentina, Cuba, Uruguay) and large cities, with the best urban and hygiene services of the time, inspired by Paris or New York¹⁴. At the beginning of the 20th century, the lowest crude death rates were found in Uruguay (14 per thousand), Argentina (20 per thousand), Cuba (24 per thousand) and Panama (21 per thousand), whereas the rest of the countries recorded crude death rates above 30 per thousand (Delaunay and Cosio Zavala 1992, p. 17). For the whole of Latin America¹⁵, Arriaga estimated life expectancy at 25 years around 1825, and at 27 years around 1900 (Arriaga 1968), a considerable delay compared to European levels, which reached around 41 years for life expectancy by 1840 in Sweden, England, Wales and France (Vallin 2003, p. 5). Large differences were also observed within the subcontinent, depending on regions, infrastructure and economic and social development levels. In Cuba, for example, life expectancy in 1910 reached 34 years for men and 37 years for women (Albizu-Campos 2000). The decline in Cuban mortality was particularly rapid and Cuba has the lowest infant mortality rate in Latin America, with a rate of four deaths of children under the age of 1 per thousand births between 2015–2020 (United Nations 2019a, Mort/1-1).

Table 1.3 shows the changes in life expectancies and the infant mortality rate between 1950 and 2020.