Mortality trajectory in the city of São Paulo (Brazil) in the period of massa migration

This study analyzes the mortality trajectory and its characteristics in the City of São Paulo, between the last decade of the nineteenth century and the early decades of the twentieth century, using the data from Anuário Demógrafo-sanitário (Demographic-sanitary year book).
In that time, this city lived an intense urbanization and industrialization and suffered a very strong impact of international immigration. The arrival of a large number of immigrants (mainly Italians, Portuguese and Spanish) in a short period of time strongly affected the population structure and dynamics of this city. In 1886, São Paulo had 47.697 inhabitants, increasing to 1.033.202 in 1934.
Although most of the population lived in poor living conditions and also poor working conditions, which in some years had facilitated the spread of epidemics and endemic diseases, the São Paulo State health policy in the early years of the twentieth century, as sanitation programs, immunization, vectors control and improvements in nutrition, led to a decline in mortality rates in the City of São Paulo and also other localities of the State in the end of the 1920’s, in the beginning of the 1940’s and the 1950’s, with the popularization of antibiotics in Brazil.