Slave treatment played a large role in the birthrates. Slave treatment was a product of the environment that the slaves lived in, the means of production in the place they were living, and finally the ratio of whites to slaves.

The tropical climates of the Caribbean islands and Latin America provided allowed for disease to run rampant. The temperate climate of the North America for the most part did not allow for diseases such as yellow fever and malaria to flourish. Additionally, the Caribbean basin was exposed to tropical storms and hurricanes. These storms frequently destroyed slave shelters and left them exposed which at times could lead to their deaths.

The most important factor was the type of work that the slaves did. Two types of labor that were prominent in the Caribbean and Latin America were sugar and mining, Sugar needed to be processed in short time period after it was cut, so during sugar season, slaves were forced to work 16 hour days which led to many accidents. Mines were also a brutal work environment and were not as safe as today's mines. Many mine collapses combined with brutal hours ended the lives of many slaves. Brazil, which imported the most amount of slaves, was forced to continuously import slaves at a breakneck speed due to the fact that so many slaves died processing sugar cane and mining for gold.

Finally, many of the Caribbean colonies had a small population of whites for a large slave population while this was almost never the case in North America. The small white population was constantly in fear of revolt which led them brutally control their slaves. Since slaves were in the minority in many parts of North America, the fear of a slave revolt was constant but not as intense as in other areas.

Burnard, Trevor. Mastery, Tyranny, and Desire: Thomas Thistlewood and his Slaves in the Anglo-Jamaican World. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2004.

Davis, David Brion. Inhuman Bondage. The Rise and Fall of Slavery in the New World. Electronic Edition. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2006.

McDonald, Roderick A. The Economy and Material Culture of Slaves: Goods and Chattels on the Sugar Plantations of Jamaica and Louisiana. Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 1993.

Slaves in the Caribbean and South America mainly worked on sugar cane plantations, whereas North American slaves worked on cotton, tobacco, and rice plantations. The labor conditions in the Caribbean and South America were much harsher because of the nature of work on the sugar cane plantations.