Determinantes da cobertura de esgotamento sanitário no Brasil

Abstract

Despite some progress authorities have been promoting in the past few years, many difficulties remain in the Brazilian basic sanitation sector. The inequality in access to those public services, the non-coordinated public policies and the absence of an efficient regulatory framework are the main challenges to the sector. This study analyses the factors behind the basic sanitation coverage in Brazil, based on the Pesquisa Nacional de Saneamento Básico 1989/2000 (1989 and 2000 National Survey of Basic Sanitation) and the Censo Demográfico 1991/2000 (1991 and 2000 Demographic Census), both published by the Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística (IBGE). Two models were built in a way to estimate the factors that determine the installation of sanitary sewer services in Brazilian houses and the factors that explain the ratio of houses covered by sanitary sewer services in Brazilian cities - the first, a limited dependent variable model, and the second a Double-Hurdle model, both using demand, supply, institutional and control variables. An important result, for example, is that the variable income per capita is not statistically significant for the first model but it is for the second, which seems to indicate, on one hand, that the fact that exists many bolsões de pobreza (communities of concentrated poverty) are more important than the city basic level of income in the case of determining the installation of sanitary sewer services in Brazilian houses but, on the other hand, that income per capita is the main factor in the sewer services expansion. At last, progress can be made by studding more carefully the political effects that seems to affect disproportionally and unequally cities expenses with sewer services.