Ecuador’s Amazon houses extraordinary levels of plant and animal biodiversity, plays a key role in global climate processes and carbon cycles, and supports the physical and cultural survival of indigenous and traditional forest people.  However, because of petroleum exploitation, colonization, infrastructure development, urbanization, and land clearing for agriculture and cattle ranching, Ecuador has had the highest rate of deforestation in the entire Amazon Basin since 1990. 

These processes have also led indigenous populations to become increasingly involved in the market economy, with profound economic, health, and cultural implications.  This project will determine the health consequences of increasing integration to the market (abbreviated MI) among a cross-cultural sample of five native Amazonian populations of northeastern Ecuador. 

Our research aims are to: (1) investigate variation in health, and (2) examine the mechanisms through which MI influences health through reciprocity networks, mobility, diet, and access to and use of medical care.  The project integrates methodologies from ecological, cultural, and biological anthropology and includes focus groups, cultural domain analysis, dietary intake interviews, and time allocation as well as anthropometric assessment and biomarkers of current infection, anemia and vitamin A status.  This project is one of the few cross-cultural and interdisciplinary studies of indigenous economics and health.  It builds on long-term collaborative and comparative research in the region and develops a model based on linking empirical data on MI with biocultural outcomes.  Theoretically, this research furthers understanding of the connections between cultural behavior, socioeconomic context, and health, with implications for biocultural resilience, human behavioral ecology, and life history theory.  The broader impacts of this project will be seen in its relevance to promotion of indigenous well-being, direct public communication to policymakers, and promotion of education and training of Ecuadorian and US students.

Theoretical Framework

We will test the hypothesis that the relationship between MI and health resembles an inverted-U (also known as the Kuznets curve), such that morbidity is highest at intermediate levels of MI. The Kuznets curve has been applied to other phenomena, including economic growth and income inequality (Kuznets 1955; Godoy et al. 2004) and environmental degradation and income per capita (Stern 2004). Our application of the Kuznet’s parabolic curve to relate market involvement and health is novel, but derives some support from recent studies. For example, Godoy and Cárdenas (2000) undertook a study in Bolivia to examine the relationship between self-reported male morbidity and market integration. They found a nonlinear relationship between markets and morbidity: sale of rice and morbidity had an inverted U, but the link between wage labor and morbidity was U-shaped. They call for further research that (1) uses larger samples, (2) develops a better theoretical model of adult morbidity, and (3) pays close attention to measures of market integration, all of which we propose to do.

The Kuznets curve provides a theoretical basis for the novel conceptualization that the relationship between economic change and health is non-linear, but it doesn’t tell us why. Specifically, what are the pathways and processes through which economic factors impact health? Utilizing a proximate determinants framework, we will examine this question by focusing on factors such as dietary quality and security, social support networks and reciprocity, and medical sources and access/mobility. Hypothesized relationships will be tested inter- and intra-ethnically.