IJCS | Volume 31, Nº2, March / April 2018

128 Soares et al. Cardiovascular Mortality X Gross Domestic Product Int J Cardiovasc Sci. 2018;31(2)123-132 Original Article Figure 1 – Evolution of decennial GDP per capita in the Rio de Janeiro State municipalities from 1950 to 2009. This study was aimed at demonstrating a correlation between the reduction in the mortality rates from DCS and their major subgroups, IHD and CBVD, occurring since 1980, and the improvement in socioeconomic indicators from the second half of the 20th century. Although GDPpc is a good socioeconomic indicator portraying an overview of the socioeconomic conditions of a certain place, it is not the best; however, because the GDP data of the Rio de Janeiro State municipalities are available and organized by municipality since 1920, we chose to correlate them with those mortality rates, considering the several time lags between those indices. 13 In the period analyzed, from 1950 to 2010, the GDPpc increased in all municipalities, but heterogeneously. ThehighestGDPpcvalueswere foundinthemunicipalities of Rio de Janeiro and Niterói, the former is the current state capital, former capital of Brazil from 1763 to 1960 25 and of the extinct Guanabara State until 1975, while the latter was the former capital of the Rio de Janeiro State until 1975. 26 Other municipalities had high GDPpc, being directly related to certain industrial activities as follows: Barra Mansa, related to the steelworks industry (Volta Redonda, which houses the headquarters of the Brazilian Steelworks Company, was aggregated to Barra Mansa