Um estudo sobre a distribuição das transferências para o setor de saúde no Brasil

Abstract

This paper investigates the existence of a positive relationship between municipal per capita revenues – which includes local taxes and unconditional lump sum federal grant receipts - and federal grants received through the Unified Health System (Sistema Único de Saúde – SUS) by the brazilian municipalities. Considering the redistributive aspect, this relationship may not be socially desirable, since richer municipalities would benefit from greater grant receipts destined to health care. Fixed effect panel data models were estimated, using municipal information from 2002 to 2010. Data was mostly obtained from Departamento de Informações do SUS (DATASUS) and Sistema de Informações sobre Orçamentos Públicos em Saúde (SIOPS), both from the Brazilian Ministry of Health. Our results show that municipal revenue has indeed a positive and unexpected impact on federal grant receipts destined to health care. We also identified some evidence that there may be political factors influencing the federal grants received through the SUS.