Journal Article

Child morbidity and mortality associated with alternative policy responses to the economic crisis in Brazil: A nationwide microsimulation study

Hone, Thomas, Millett, Christopher, Paes-Sousa, Romulo, Rasella, Davide, Basu, Sanjay, Ocké-Reis, Carlos Octávio

2018

Overview

Since 2015, a major economic crisis in Brazil has led to increasing poverty and the implementation of long-term fiscal austerity measures that will substantially reduce expenditure on social welfare programmes as a percentage of the country's GDP over the next 20 years. The Bolsa Família Programme (BFP)-one of the largest conditional cash transfer programmes in the world-and the nationwide primary healthcare strategy (Estratégia Saúde da Família [ESF]) are affected by fiscal austerity, despite being among the policy interventions with the strongest estimated impact on child mortality in the country. We investigated how reduced coverage of the BFP and ESF-compared to an alternative scenario where the level of social protection under these programmes is maintained-may affect the under-five mortality rate (U5MR) and socioeconomic inequalities in child health in the country until 2030, the end date of the Sustainable Development Goals. We developed and validated a microsimulation model, creating a synthetic cohort of all 5,507 Brazilian municipalities for the period 2017-2030. This model was based on the longitudinal dataset and effect estimates from a previously published study that evaluated the effects of poverty, the BFP, and the ESF on child health. We forecast the economic crisis and the effect of reductions in BFP and ESF coverage due to current fiscal austerity on the U5MR, and compared this scenario with a scenario where these programmes maintain the levels of social protection by increasing or decreasing with the size of Brazil's vulnerable populations (policy response scenarios). We used fixed effects multivariate regression models including BFP and ESF coverage and accounting for secular trends, demographic and socioeconomic changes, and programme duration effects. With the maintenance of the levels of social protection provided by the BFP and ESF, in the most likely economic crisis scenario the U5MR is expected to be 8.57% (95% CI: 6.88%-10.24%) lower in 2030 than under fiscal austerity-a cumulative 19,732 (95% CI: 10,207-29,285) averted under-five deaths between 2017 and 2030. U5MRs from diarrhoea, malnutrition, and lower respiratory tract infections are projected to be 39.3% (95% CI: 36.9%-41.8%), 35.8% (95% CI: 31.5%-39.9%), and 8.5% (95% CI: 4.1%-12.0%) lower, respectively, in 2030 under the maintenance of BFP and ESF coverage, with 123,549 fewer under-five hospitalisations from all causes over the study period. Reduced coverage of the BFP and ESF will also disproportionately affect U5MR in the most vulnerable areas, with the U5MR in the poorest quintile of municipalities expected to be 11.0% (95% CI: 8.0%-13.8%) lower in 2030 under the maintenance of BFP and ESF levels of social protection than under fiscal austerity, compared to no difference in the richest quintile. Declines in health inequalities over the last decade will also stop under a fiscal austerity scenario: the U5MR concentration index is expected to remain stable over the period 2017-2030, compared to a 13.3% (95% CI: 5.6%-21.8%) reduction under the maintenance of BFP and ESF levels of protection. Limitations of our analysis are the ecological nature of the study, uncertainty around future macroeconomic scenarios, and potential changes in other factors affecting child health. A wide range of sensitivity analyses were conducted to minimise these limitations. The implementation of fiscal austerity measures in Brazil can be responsible for substantively higher childhood morbidity and mortality than expected under maintenance of social protection-threatening attainment of Sustainable Development Goals for child health and reducing inequality.

• Publisher: Public Library of Science,Public Library of Science (PLoS)
• Subject: At risk populations / Austerity policy / Biology and Life Sciences / Brazil - epidemiology / Child / Child death / Child health / Child Mortality / Child Welfare - economics / Child Welfare - legislation & jurisprudence / Children / Childrens health / Comparative analysis / Demographics / Diarrhea / Ecology and Environmental Sciences / Economic aspects / Economic crisis / Economic forecasting / Economic Recession / Economics / Economics - statistics & numerical data / Expenditures / Financial crises / Food prices / Forecasts and trends / GDP / Gross Domestic Product / Health care policy / Healthcare Financing / Humans / Income inequality / Infant mortality / Low income groups / Malnutrition / Medicine and Health Sciences / Models, Economic / Morbidity / Mortality / People and places / Poverty / Poverty - economics / Poverty - statistics & numerical data / Primary care / Public health / Recessions / Regression analysis / Respiratory tract / Respiratory tract diseases / Sensitivity analysis / Social aspects / Social protection / Social Sciences / Socioeconomic Factors / Socioeconomics / Studies / Supervision / Sustainable development