Women and the quality of public health services in Brazil
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2022-11-21
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Mello, Eduardo Jordão de Achilles
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Increasing women's representation in local executive and legislative offices may impact how they behave differently from their male counterparts and deliver public policies. This paper examines whether electing women as mayor and increasing local chamber representation leads to an improvement in eleven healthcare indicators. Using a regression discontinuity design and fixed effect methods in a panel covering over 5000 Brazilian municipalities over 20 years, the results suggest female mayors significantly improve child and maternal healthcare indicators, while increasing women's representation in the local chamber leads to an overall increase in healthcare performance indicators. Moreover, I find evidence that competitiveness plays a role in mediating this relationship. These findings echo the literature on substantive representation and suggest that increasing women's representation in politics leads to better health, especially among women and children in Brazil.