Basic rights denied: Brazilians' concerns as a reflection of society

‘What are your main concerns right now?’ seems like a simple, straightforward and possibly predictable question for anyone who follows the country’s news. However, its potential as a source of information is enormous. This is one of the key context metrics measured by Ipsos in our What Worries The World survey across 29 countries every month, and its results are incredibly rich from different perspectives. It is possible, for example, to identify priorities in areas including public policy, media and ESG.

In more definitive terms, correctly identifying the concerns of a country’s population can even determine the result of an electoral process – in 85% of national elections, the winner will be the candidate with the best performance evaluated in addressing the country’s main concern at the time of the election.

In Brazil, at the time we wrote this article (July 2024), the ranking of Brazilians' concerns was as follows:

Although the ranking’s ‘podium’ has been reasonably stable for more than two years, understanding its evolution tells an important story about the recent history of Brazilian society.

Crime and violence

Despite topping the rankings in several countries – particularly in Latin America – Crime and Violence only recently became the most important concern for Brazilians, when it took the lead in November 2023. There are several reasons for this:

• Brazil is obviously a very violent country. And although some crimes are showing a downward trend – homicides have been falling since 2017, for example – other types of crimes are on the rise again, such as femicide, rape and LGBTphobia. The increase in crimes against minority groups (in the examples, women and the LGBTQIAPN+ population) is clear, as a result of the country’s polarisation, strong approaches to the issue, and a reduction in the still drastic underreporting that characterises these crimes.
• A brutal increase in ‘crimes against property’, as ‘scams’ are called. Every 16 seconds, a fraud occurs in the country, mainly through digital means, driven by social networks and chat apps. There is significant underreporting resulting from the embarrassment of having been the victim of a scam.
• Social media also plays a role in the greater awareness of violent incidents, as it is a very fertile ground for videos, testimonies, statistics, isolated cases or even fake news to be multiplied with impressive speed and coverage. There are several studies that prove greater engagement with violent and negative headlines, for example. The hypothesis is that there may even be evolutionary roots to this fact.
• In the Ipsos Crime and Law Enforcement Monitor, released in May 2024, 34% of Brazilians noticed an increase in crimes (in general) in their neighbourhood, which places the country among the ten countries that have seen this growth the most. For some specific crimes, such as drug trafficking, the country leads the ranking of the countries surveyed, with 60% of those interviewed stating that they have already witnessed acts of this nature in their neighbourhoods.

Health

This is the only concern that has always been among the three most mentioned by Brazilians since the monitoring began in 2010. Taking a regional view, Brazil is the only country in Latin America with a high level of concern for health, and one of the nations with the greatest concerns about this issue in the world.

Of course, the issue becomes even more prominent during times of pandemics or dengue epidemics, for example – which explains peaks in mentions in specific months. However, health is always one of the greatest concerns of the Brazilian population.

The first reason for this is dissatisfaction with the public health service. Although the SUS (Brazil’s government-run public health care system) is recognised as an important model for offering free treatment to the population – a format that does not exist in most of the other nations surveyed – it is clear that the public network, a universal constitutional right in the country, is obviously insufficient and generates delays, difficulties and a lack of specialties and exams for citizens. An interesting point is that the countries where health concerns are highest in the What Worries the World study, such as the United Kingdom, Canada and Brazil, have public health systems. This shows that it is not enough to provide the benefit to the population, but it is necessary to pay attention to the quality of the service provided.

In Brazil, a survey by the Ministry of Health with the IBGE shows that 71% of Brazilians visit some public health facility in the country in a given year.

On the other hand, supplementary health, as private health plans, assistance and services are defined, serves 51 million Brazilians (National Health Agency, December 2023). The number, although high in absolute terms, is 24.9% of the population. And the sector has recently been undergoing numerous transformations due to cost pressure. Demographic factors linked to the rapid resumption of population aging after the pandemic (today, the life expectancy of Brazilians is 75.5 years, and 79 years for women), and the increase in the proportion of Brazilians over 60 years of age (who already account for 15% of the population) intensify the problem. As a result, the transfer to the client was, on average in the first quarter of 2024, an aggressive 15%, according to data from the National Supplementary Health Agency. And with more limitations on services and, in many cases, coverage restrictions for procedures and even older people.

Poverty and social inequality

This concern had never appeared among the three most cited – until the pandemic. Simultaneously with the growth of specific concern about Covid, which Ipsos included in the survey when the pandemic broke out, the mention of Poverty and Social Inequality has increased significantly among the main concerns of Brazilians.

The interpretation is that the needs imposed by the pandemic (i.e. isolation, shelter, connection, technology, home office) have exposed the gap between the richest and the poorest – the most exposed, vulnerable and needy population.

Even after the pandemic, Poverty and Social Inequality remained among the most cited Brazilian concerns. Discussions on important platforms for the current government, such as income transfer and tax reform, for example, bring the topic into the news every day, which is more than necessary considering the worrying income distribution in Brazil. According to the 2022 UN ranking, the country is the 14th nation with the worst income distribution in the world, where the richest 5% concentrate 40% of the wealth (FGV, 2024).

Environment and climate change

In Brazil, concern for the environment is not among the five most cited. Considering a Maslow-style scale of needs, mentions of Crime or Health, for example, certainly take precedence.

However, it should be mentioned that largely due to the recent tragic extreme natural phenomena in the country, concern about climate change has been growing at very significant rates – and rapidly. In June, for example, concern was cited by 19%, an increase of 10 percentage points in just 12 months. In July, concern remained in the same 8th position. Concern about threats to the environment has been growing and remains in double digits, at 11%, leaving Brazil as the second most concerned nation about the issue, behind only Mexico.

The impact of the floods in Rio Grande do Sul in the first half of 2024, which, according to preliminary estimates by the National Federation of Municipalities, claimed nearly 200 lives and caused more than R$10.4 billion in damages, has had a very strong influence. But this was not the only phenomenon to drive the issue, even if it was the most tragic and media intensive. Record-breaking fires in the Amazon and Pantanal, coastal landslides, crop failures, heat waves and record temperatures have all been in the news recently. According to the UN's World Meteorological Organization, in a report released in May 2024, 12 extreme weather events were recorded in Brazil in 2023 alone.

Taxes

Another emerging concern worth mentioning is taxes. Although it is always present in the top 10 concerns of people in Brazil, the issue had not previously emerged among the five biggest concerns. In July 2024, with an increase of 8 percentage points compared to the previous month, the concern entered the top five, reaching 28% of mentions in the What Worries the World survey.

The issue has certainly gained great media attention recently due to the Federal Government's initiatives to create (and in some cases revive) some taxes and fees to try to balance the public budget. Increasing taxes is clearly never a strategy that is well received by the population, but the good humour of Brazilians used to respond to the population's great dissatisfaction gave even greater visibility to the actions.

The beginning of this whole discussion was the taxation of popular Chinese e-commerce sites, which Brazilians soon nicknamed the ‘blouse tax’, an allusion to the products that are one of the most purchased items on these platforms. The series of measures that followed further increased the visibility of the issue, which ended up generating satires of the Minister of Finance, Fernando Haddad, with hundreds of memes spreading across the internet. The sudden rise in the number of Brazilians concerned about taxes makes clear the potential of memes as a communication tool, due to their ease of absorption and rapid multiplication – which is obviously worrying, as they are shallow, limited in their argumentation and, in many cases, potentially fake.

It is a fact that the continuation of this concern directly harms the government, and touches on a very sensitive point for the population, which already suffers from a high number of taxes and fees that impact its budget. This certainly contributes to the already worn-out image of the federal government.

That said, although the issue is now on the rise, driven by all this advent of digital media, this is a concern that should diminish after the implementation of the tax reform and give way to other priority issues that previously took turns in fifth place, such as education and inflation.

Looking ahead

This retrospective analysis of Brazilians' concerns is increasingly important for understanding the country's society. It goes beyond the data analysed, since we were able to document that, as concerns evolve, several other aspects of citizens' behaviour and attitudes change, a topic for future discussion.

Therefore, we predict that looking at Brazilians' concerns will become an even more essential tool in the future for understanding the context in which the public, private and non-governmental sectors operate – and ignoring them greatly reduces the chances of initiatives succeeding. Every company or agency must have a tool to monitoring key context metrics, or risks losing relevance or effectiveness. Furthermore, through the analytical process of this text strengthens the hypothesis that the factors motivating the identification of the main concerns highlighted here are a contextual trend – that is, they should persist or even intensify by 2025. In other words, these concerns that are currently at the top of the list, in addition to concerns about sustainability, should continue to set the tone for Brazilian society – and should therefore be prioritised whenever possible.

Table of contents:

• An introduction to Flair Brazil 2025 - Movements under the surface: tectonic tensions and real opportunities
• Basic rights denied: Brazilians' concerns as a reflection of society
• The people of Brazil: A new approach to understanding context, homes and the new Brazilian family
• Are they really that liberal and progressive? How the complexity of Gen Z challenges market understanding
• Corporate reputation: ESG, polycrisis and polarisation
• A new work model: the role of employees and purpose in organisations
• A new concept of beauty: how AI is transforming image standards