BRAZIL RANKS LOW ON SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT INDICATORS

 
"Brazil Ranked 125 in Health," proclaimed the headlines on the front pages of Brazilian newspapers on June 21. The news was official confirmation of what many Brazilians already know: something is desperately wrong with the much-touted recovery of the eighth-largest economy in the world. The low ranking accorded the country by the World Health Organization (WHO) made the government bristle, but it is only one of many indications of Brazil's struggle to balance concern for social equity with macroeconomic prosperity and growth.

Brazil ranked 125 out of 199 countries included in the WHO survey. Only Haiti, Honduras, Peru, Guyana and Bolivia ranked below it in the Americas. Surprisingly, given the ongoing armed conflict there, Colombia at number 22 was the top-ranked of any Latin American nation. Chile, Costa Rica and Cuba also came out well in the survey.

Brazil's best performance was in sanitation spending per capita. Even in this area, however, Brazil's $428 per capita was nearly half of Argentina's $823. Brazil's leading television news program, "Jornal Nacional" on the Globo television network, reported that President Fernando Henrique Cardoso was furious over the ranking. He questioned the information used to arrive at such a poor showing and demanded an explanation from the WHO. Brazilian Health Minister José Serra issued an official note challenging the figures used to formulate the indicators, but added an honest evaluation of Brazil's health problems. "The principal reasons for such a bad ranking in the global context go beyond the health area," Serra stated in the June 21 edition of the Folha de São Paulo. Among the root causes, he cited "the unequal income distribution in the country, the semi-paralysis of investment in public sanitation projects and the insufficient budget for health….The greater the income inequity, the less potable water and sewage systems, the higher public [health care] spending must be." What does this say about an economic model that requires levels of economic adjustment and austerity so high that the public sector is incapable of providing even minimum levels of assistance?

The WHO survey was not the only international development index to give Brazil a low ranking recently. It came in 79th on the United Nations Index of Human Development, below the average ranking. In response, President Cardoso announced another in a series of measures to fight poverty, a "quick fix" of more than $2.5 billion to reverse the negative social indices. The goal of the program, unofficially called "IDH 12" after the UN Index, is to make strong and swift improvements in priority areas of concentrated poverty. In addition to gaining the country a better showing in the next UN survey, the Folha de São Paulo suggested, the program is designed to rescue the Cardoso government's lagging public opinion ratings.