Effect of better living conditions on the health of mother and child

How did public health reforms, urbanization, immigration, and environmental conditions shape maternal and infant health in Brazil during the first half of the twentieth century? The research project Vital Republic: Maternal and Infant Health in Early-Twentieth-Century Brazil must shed light on this critical period of Brazilian history. The NWO is making €50,000 available for this research within the framework of the SGW Open Competition XS 2026.

In this project Daniel Franken focuses on thousands of maternity hospital records from São Paulo between 1901 and 1950 to construct the first large-scale historical dataset of birth outcomes for Brazil. The study looks at indicators such as birthweight, stillbirths, and maternal mortality, which provide valuable insights into living standards, health inequalities, and the broader demographic transition.

By linking these records to information on sanitation infrastructure, flooding, climate conditions, and housing, the project investigates how social and environmental factors influenced health at the very beginning of life.

The research will produce a fully documented historical dataset that can be used to study health, inequality, and human development in Latin America. More broadly, the project seeks to understand how investments in public health and infrastructure contributed to improvements in population health and whether those benefits were shared equally across different social and immigrant groups.

Daniel Franken: ‘I would consider the project successful if it produces one of the first large-scale datasets on maternal and infant health for Latin America in this period. And it should help us better understand how public health investments and social conditions affected human development over time.’ Franken hopes the project will contribute to broader debates about social and racial inequality, public health infrastructure, and the long-term origins of health disparities.

‘I believe the research is important because many contemporary inequalities in maternal and infant health have deep historical roots. By studying these processes historically, we can better understand how environmental conditions, public health policy, and social inequality interact over time’, according to Franken. The project also brings attention to regions and populations that are often underrepresented in global historical health research.