Socioeconomic determinants of small and medium-sized dairy farms in the Ecuador-Colombia border area.

The socioeconomic factors influencing small-scale dairy producers in the border area between Ecuador and Colombia were meticulously identified. Employing a non-experimental design, the study leveraged multivariate statistical analysis to discern key determinants. Data processing was executed using the statistical software SPSS v27, facilitating comprehensive analysis. A random survey was administered to 532 small and medium-scale dairy producers in the Carchi province of Ecuador, employing a structured questionnaire supplemented with a Likert scale for nuanced insights. Based on 35 original variables, seven determining factors were identified in dairy farms: political representation, adequate housing, equipment, innovation, empathy, profitability, social welfare, which combined explain 60.95% of the system's variability. Such factors affect production, the level of household income, as well as their effect on the standard of living of households. Three groups were formed, the first with a low perception of economic development (Traditionalists 33.3%); the second with a better expectation of economic development (Modernizers 27.6%); and the third, identified with greater economic development (Innovators 10.3%). Each group presents cases with a low to high standard of living perspective. The groups have peculiarities in terms of their performance that can be applied to the entire population. A significant relation was established between socioeconomic factors and standard of living.

Height and standard of living in Puerto Rico from the Spanish enlightenment to annexation by the United States, 1770-1924.

This preliminary work presents a first series of heights of male adults in Puerto Rico. The sample, made up of 6000 prisoner records. the estimates were systematically assessed for selectivity, and we find that selectivity is quite negligible for the main results. The text studies the extreme dependence of the standard of living on the evolution of the price of sugar, a dependence which caused the progressive deterioration of material well-being in the country. Only between 1860 and 1880 did Puerto Ricans enjoy some improvement and a higher level of height. We measures the negative short-term effects of the 1898 annexation Puerto Rico by the United States.

Height in eighteenth-century Chilean men: Evidence from military records, 1730-1800s.

This article provides the first height estimates for the adult population for any period of Chilean history. Based on military records, it gives an analysis of the average heights of male soldiers in the last eight decades of the colonial period, c.1730-1800s. The average height of Chilean men was around 167 centimetres, making them on average taller than men from Mexico, Italy, Portugal, Spain and Venezuela, but of a similar height to men from Sweden. However, Chilean men were clearly shorter than men in neighbouring Argentina, the USA and the UK. Chilean height remained stable during the 1740-1770s, but it declined by some 2-3 centimetres between the 1780 s and the 1800s, in line with a fall in real wages due to increasing food prices and population growth.

The biological standard of living in Suriname, c. 1870-1975.

The physical stature of Surinamese soldiers is estimated to have increased by more than 3cm between 1870 and 1909. In the subsequent four decades, the increase in adult male and female height amounted to 0.3-0.5cm and 0.9-1.0cm per decade, respectively. This increase in height continued and accelerated during the second half of the twentieth century. Height increase among African and Hindustani Surinamese males and females was similar. Height differences between African and Hindustani Surinamese were therefore fairly constant over time, at 4-5cm. Other indicators of nutritional and health status, such as infant mortality, showed continuous improvement, whereas per capita calorie and protein availability improved in the twentieth century.

Pobreza e direitos humanos: da mera retórica às obrigações jurídicas - um estudo crítico sobre diferentes modelos conceituais / Pobreza y derechos humanos: desde la retórica a las obligaciones legales - una descripción crítica de los marcos conceptuales / Poverty and human rights: from rhetoric to legal obligations a critical account of conceptual frameworks

Definir a pobreza como uma violação de direitos humanos envolve conceitos ainda pouco claros. Isto é especialmente problemático para aqueles que trabalham em direitos humanos e levam a sério a indivisibilidade própria destes direitos; para aqueles que procuram entender o papel central da pobreza no sofrimento de muitas vítimas de direitos humanos e se preocupam em atuar de maneira profissional neste tema, utilizando como ferramenta na luta contra a pobreza as obrigações vinculantes em direitos humanos já reconhecidas internacionalmente. O presente artigo procura esclarecer esta lacuna conceitual, apresentando um resumo crítico das principais propostas para elucidar, a partir de uma perspectiva jurídica dos direitos humanos, os conceitos pertinentes à relação entre pobreza e direitos humanos. Este artigo identifica três formas distintas de relacionar estes conceitos: (1) teorias que concebem a pobreza, por si só, como uma violação de direitos humanos; (2) teorias que definem a pobreza como uma violação de um direito humano específico, a saber, o direito a um nível de vida adequado ou o direito ao desenvolvimento; e (3) teorias que consideram a pobreza como causa ou conseqüência de violações de direitos humanos. Defenderei, em minha conclusão, que a terceira abordagem é a mais útil diante do atual estágio do Direito e da jurisprudência internacional de direitos humanos. A segunda perspectiva, no entanto, tende fortemente a promover o debate sobre pobreza e direitos humanos e, portanto, deveria ser melhor elaborada.

There is still lack of conceptual clarity in the notion of poverty as a violation of human rights. This is a problem for human rights practitioners that take the indivisibility of human rights seriously, understand the centrality of poverty in the plight of many human rights victims and want to work professionally, through binding internationally recognized human rights obligations, in the fight against poverty. This paper tries to clarify the conceptual gap. It presents a critical summary of the most important attempts to conceptually clarify the connection between poverty and human rights from an international human rights law perspective. It analyzes different conceptual frameworks, their strengths and weaknesses. The paper identifies three different models for linking both concepts: (1) theories that conceive poverty as per se a violation of human rights; (2) theories that conceptualize poverty as a violation of one specific human right, namely the right to an adequate standard of living or to development; and (3) theories that conceive poverty as a cause or consequence of human rights violations. The paper concludes that the third approach is the most useful in the current state of development of international human rights law and jurisprudence, but that the second approach has a lot of potential to push the poverty and human rights agenda forward and it should be developed further.

Todavía hay una falta de claridad conceptual en la noción de la pobreza como violación a los derechos humanos. Esto es un problema para los abogados de derechos humanos que se toman en serio la indivisibilidad de los derechos humanos, que entienden la centralidad de la pobreza en la situación apremiante de muchas víctimas de violaciones a los derechos humanos y que quieren trabajar de manera profesional, a través de las obligaciones vinculantes de derechos humanos reconocidas internacionalmente, en la lucha contra la pobreza. Este artículo intenta clarificar el vacío conceptual. Presenta un resumen crítico de los intentos más importantes de clarificar la conexión entre pobreza y derechos humanos desde la perspectiva del derecho internacional de los derechos humanos. Analiza diferentes marcos conceptuales, sus fortalezas y sus debilidades. El artículo identifica tres modelos diferentes para vincular ambos conceptos: (1) teorías que conciben a la pobreza como una violación de derechos humanos en sí misma; (2) teorías que conceptualizan a la pobreza como una violación a un derecho humano específico, a saber el derecho a un nivel adecuado de vida o al desarrollo; y (3) teorías que conciben a la pobreza como una causa o consecuencia de violaciones a los derechos humanos. El ensayo concluye que el tercer enfoque es el más útil en el estado actual de desarrollo del derecho y la jurisprudencia internacional de los derechos humanos, pero que el segundo enfoque tiene mucho potencial para empujar hacia adelante la agenda de pobreza y derechos humanos y que debe continuar siendo desarrollada.

[Standard of living, reproduction, and health in South America during the twentieth century: a time-series analysis]. / Nivel de vida, reproduccion y salud en America del Sur durante el siglo XX: un analisis de series temporales.

PIP: "Based on published vital statistics and economic data from twentieth century Argentina and Chile, the authors undertake a systematic evaluation of the interactions holding between yearly and monthly economic and demographic fluctuations over much of the present century. Adjustments to data are proposed, as are new approaches to the statistical modelling of these interactions. Based on the use of distributed lag models, this study suggests that while economic variations continue to have implications for demographic behaviour, that relationship has varied substantially in the past decades." (EXCERPT)^ieng

[Population problems in Latin America]. / Problemas da populacao na America Latina.

PIP: Accelerated urban growth is one of the main impediments to rapid development in Latin America. Birth rates are closely tied to development, and improved living standards in urban areas induce migration to cities. The Brazilian urban population exceeded 70% of the total population in 1980, while rural population declined. During the period of 1950-70 high demographic growth occurred as a result of high fertility and the drop of mortality. From the 1970s fertility declined from the under 20 years of age, a fact that will sustain high fertility for sometime. Education exerted an impact on fertility: in 1980 illiterate women averaged 6 children vs. 2.6 children for women with 8 years of education and 2.2 children for those with 12 years. Migration was another major factor: in 1950 the urban population of Latin America amounted to 40 million, and it reached 142 million in 1974. Every year about 8.7 million people are added to the urban population. In 1950 those who resided in an urban area made up 9.2%, in 1975 they increased to 22%, but all urban residents amount to about 40% of the total population. This urbanization has also produced major income differentials. In Argentina 20% of the poorest people get 4.5% of total income, while 10% of the richest get 35%. In Brazil 20% of the poorest receive 2% of income, while 10% of the richest get 50.5% of total income. Unfortunately, the Brazilian model is more typical of Latin America. It is a fundamental premise that balanced population growth and economic development go hand in hand, and the improvement of living standards is essential for the reduction of exponential population growth.^ieng

[Human resources in Latin America: a historical focus on the relations among population, education, and employment]. / Los recursos humanos en la America Latina: enfoque historico de las relaciones entre poblacion, educacion y empleo.

PIP: Analysis of human resources has a history of almost 3 decades in Latin America. This method of assessing temporary and structural balances and imbalances between population, education, and employment began in the 1960s with recognition of the role of education in development. The human resources perspective tended to be centered more on the availability or supply of resources as affected by educational planning than on occupational requirements or demand. It was also centered on problems of educational investment and planning, leaving aside other basic aspects of human resources development such as health or nutrition. The notion of human resources has progressed in Latin America from imitation of the educational systems of the industrialized countries to attempts to project future occupational structures in Latin America and to adjust training and educational programs accordingly. But longterm projection of occupational structures is very difficult in Latin America primarily because of the unstable and dependent status of Latin American economies which leave them at the mercy of changes in the central countries. A series of studies in the mid-1970s argued for the need to revise the dominant development strategies in order to eliminate poverty within 50 years, implying increased attention to human resources. The economic crisis of the 1970s and beyond had deflected attention away from the actions necessary to reach this goal. Latin America, despite considerable economic progress and modernization, still is incapable of providing productive employment for a large proportion of its population. Around 50% of the economically active population was unemployed or underemployed in 1980. Recent studies have revealed several peculiarities in the occupational dynamics of countries, and they never have the proportion of highly skilled workers that the developed countries do. Urbanization and growth of the tertiary sector are rapid. Where agriculture has modernized, rural employment has declined abruptly. The residual category of labor in the informal sector is large and growing rapidly in countries of the region. These distortions express the structural incapacity of economies on the region to employ their available human resources in a context of rapid population growth and considerable (though still insufficient) investment in education. A different development strategy, oriented toward satisfaction of basic needs of the population, would mobilize human resources and create employment. In the case of educaiton, available data point to a continuing disarticulation between population dynamics, employment, and education. The existence of some 40 million illiterates in Latin America and the Caribbean and the wasted investment in large numbers of highly educated persons who either emigrate or remain underemployed in their own countries express 2 facets of this problem.^ieng

[Food and population: study of three countries]. / Alimentacion y poblacion: estudio de 3 paises.

PIP: In 1985, despite a nearly 25% worldwide surplus of cereals, more than 700 million poor people had insufficient food and some 17 million children died of malnutrition or related causes. 16% of the developing world's population is undernourished. Rapid population growth is a major reason for the world's hunger. Large families exhaust the resources of many urban couples and rural couples with little land. Closely spaced pregnancies deplete the nutritional resources of the mother and lead to low birth weight babies and inadequate lactation. Population growth in already densely populated countries reduces the land available for each family, inevitably contributing to poverty and rural malnutrition. Unemployment and underemployment reach alarming proportions in the city, where the combination of high fertility rates and migration from the countryside have produced growth twice that of the world population as a whole. Few developing countries have been able to generate sufficient investment to create new jobs for all seeking them. Unstable governments attempt to pacify urban unrest by subsidizing food prices and concentrating social and economic investments in the cities, causing further deterioration in rural conditions. Today more than 60 countries have food deficits, although not all are suffering. India, Kenya, and Mexico are 3 countries that have had some success in balancing population growth and food production, but each still has undernourished population sectors because of economic policies that fail to provide sufficient help to their poor and because of implacable population growth. Ending malnutrition in the 3 countries will require reducing the cost of food for households and increasing their incomes, but both objectives are made more difficult by rapid population growth. As a result of the green revolution and other factors, food production in India has tripled since 1950, but population has almost doubled in the same years. With rapid population growth, per capita agricultural productivity increased much more slowly than production. Kenya has enjoyed impressive economic growth since independence, but its rate of population growth of 4.2%/year, the highest in the world, has meant that per capita income increases have been modest. Average nutritional status has declined in Kenya since 1968. The rate of population growth in Mexico has declined to 2.3-2.6%/year in 1986 from the 3.5% of 1974, but population growth will be rapid for decades to come because of the young age structure. Agricultural production has increased but has not kept pace with population growth. Kenya, India, and Mexico have the human and natural resources to make further economic gains in the coming decades. The difficulty of feeding their populations adequately will increase to the extent that they fail to curb their rapid population increase.^ieng

SMF focus: a comparison of vital statistics.

PIP: Prices for socially marketed condoms and oral contraceptives (OCs) in selected countries--Bangladesh, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Ghana, Honduras, India, Indonesia, Jamaica, Nepal, Zimbabwe, and Mexico--are set forth and compared with cost of living data such as per capita income and food prices. Also presented for each country is a couple-years of protection cost factor, representing the hypothetical number of days of income per capita needed to purchase a 1 year supply of condoms. The lowest such cost factor exists in India (0.9 day), followed by Jamaica (1.4 days) and Ghana (1.6 days). Countries with particularly high couple-years of protection cost factors include Honduras (10.3 days) and Zimbabwe (11.6 days). Contraceptive prices relative to a kilogram of rice are highest in Mexico, Zimbabwe, and Honduras and lowest in Bangladesh and India. Condom prices are more than twice the comparable couple-years of protection rate for OCs in Honduras and El Salvador, while there is a price equivalency in the contraceptive costs of these 2 methods in social marketing programs in Bangladesh, Jamaica, and Nepal.^ieng

Spatial distribution of proportional infant mortality and certain socioeconomic variables in Salvador, Bahia, Brazil.

PIP: The spatial distribution of infant deaths in each zone of the city of Salvador, Brazil, in 1980 was examined and related to selected socioeconomic and health care variables. The spatial distribution of infant mortality (defined as the ratio of infant deaths to total deaths in Salvador) was uneven, ranging from 3.9% in a zone in the center of the old city near the water to 52.5% in an outlying area. There was a direct correlation between proportional infant mortality and low income. The proportion of low-income families was 23.1% in the quartile containing the lowest rates of infant mortality compared with 97.7% in the quartile containing the highest such rates. Also noted was an inverse relationship between proportional infant mortality and water consumption. Similarly, the percentage of substandard housing (shacks) was directly associated with infant mortality, rising from 2% in the 1st quartile (low infant mortality) to 43% in the 4th quartile. There was additionally an inverse correlation between the average number of physicians per inhabitant and proportional infant mortality, with a rate of 5.7/10,000 inhabitants in the 1st quartile compared with 1.8 in the 4th. Overall, analysis of the spatial distribution of infant deaths in Salvador reveals that an especially high proportion of those dying were infants residing in certain zones of the city, most notably outlying neighborhoods and slums. The results further point to an important association between certain socioeconomic and sanitation variables and infant mortality. The fact that the highest correlation coefficient found in the present study was between proportional infant mortality and the percentage of low-income families underscores the significant role that economic structure plays in infant mortality. There is a need both to redefine the urban development model prevailing in Latin America and to reorient the aims of the health sector.^ieng

[Intermediate variables in the relation between infant-child mortality and the country's educational level]. / Mecanismos subjacentes a relacao entre a mortalidade infanto-juvenil e a educacao dos pais.

PIP: According to 1984 survey data, the probability of mortality for children before 2 years of age in Brazil in 1980 was 62/1000 in urban areas and 97/1000 in rural areas. Both numbers vary considerably depending on the educational level of the mothers. Children of mothers with 5 or more years of education have a less than 40/1000 probability of mortality, but this figure increases to 119/1000 in urban areas and 128/1000 in rural areas for children whose mothers have less than 1 year of education. In other Latin American countries the figures are similar. Since 1970 the infant-child mortality has diminished by 35% in urban areas and by 11% in rural areas. Most of the drop (32% in urban and 35% in rural areas) was attributable to a small segment of mothers with 5-8 years of schooling. The life expectancy of children is 17.5 and 16.6 years more in metropolitan areas of the North and the South, respectively, whose mothers have 10 or more years of education than those with less than 1 year of schooling. Family income also has an effect on mortality, but its role is disputed. Biological factors associated with the mother, nutrition, and hygiene also affect mortality. Cultural values and religious precepts defining the role of women also play a decisive role. Communication technology plays a role, as the rate was 50% higher in families without radio of television.^ieng

[Brazil: agricultural modernisation and food production restructuring in the international crisis]. / Bresil: modernisation agricole et restructuration alimentaire dans la crise internationale.

PIP: This study examines the complex relationship of capital accumulation, external debt, and food supply in Brazil, a country which has simultaneously increased its food exports and its unsatisfied demand for food imports in the context of the world economic crisis. In Brazil, the substitution of export cash crops for subsistence crops has been accompanied by a profound but incomplete restructuring of the basic food supply and model of consumption, a restructuring made possible by declining real cost of the new foods. The gap between the extremely rapid evolution of consumption, especially in the urban areas, and the possibilities of concomitant transformation of production is the characteristic feature of the change occuring in Brazil. The current diet of the developed countries evolved over a relatively long period and was based on the declining real cost of basic foodstuffs made possible by increasing labor productivity. Between 1800-1900, the real cost of a kilo of bread was halved, while that of meat remained stable. In France and the US respectively, 80 and 90% of the principal cereals are consumed by animals, while in developing countries most grains are directly consumed. Numerous indices suggest that Brazil has begun to differentiate its food regime in the direction of decreased consumption of cereals, tubers, and legumes, and increased consumption of animal products, with grains increasingly consumed indirectly by animals. Since the early 1970s, Brazil has developed a powerful processed food industry which supports intensive breeding of poultry and, to a lesser extent, pork and milk cattle. However, low income population groups have been forced to reduce their consumption of traditional foodstuffs, whose real prices have undergone relative increases, without achieving a satisfactory level of consumption of the new products. Brazilian food problems result not from insufficient production of food but from the choice of a strongly internationalist model of development in the mid-1960s which required insertion into the world economy, notably through a search for new export sectors. The agricultural sector was assigned 3 functions: producing food as cheaply as possible, increasing the proportion of exportable crops, and substituting some of the foods imported. Brazil evolved in 2 decades from a classic agroexporter to a more complex structure reflecting the semiindustrialized state of the economy. The share of processed agricultural goods increased accordingly. The foods produced for the internal market have been changing at the same time that a new hierarchy of exportable products has evolved. Agricultural policy involved recourse to market mechanisms and cheap credit focused on the south and southeastern regions, large and medium sized producers, and a few products including soy, coffee, sugar cane, and cotton. Just 3% of credits went to the traditional foodstuffs beans and manioc. The most serious consequence of the internationalization of the agricultural economy has been a dangerous increase in the vulnerability of low income groups to world food price fluctuations.^ieng