Wealth Inequalities in Different Types of Violence Among Brazilian Adolescents: National Survey of School Health 2015

Abstract

Studies have assessed inequalities in violence by economic status, but few studies have been done with adolescents from middle-income countries. Our objective was to analyze inequalities in verbal bullying, family physical violence, sexual violence, and fights with weapons among Brazilian adolescents in school according to wealth and stratified by sex and skin color. We used data from the Brazilian National Survey of School Health (Pesquisa Nacional de Saúde do Escolar [PeNSE]), carried out in 2015, with a representative sample of Brazilian adolescents attending ninth grade in public and private schools. We created a wealth index based on questions about access to goods and services through principal component analysis; this index was later divided into quintiles. We calculated the slope index of inequality (SII), the concentration index (CIX), and simple measures of inequality, such as ratio and difference. To identify statistically significant differences in sex and skin color inequality, we used the t test. We found high prevalence values of verbal bullying and family physical violence, 23.9% and 14.5%, respectively. In general, when comparing the types of violence according to SII and CIX, we observed a higher prevalence of violence among adolescents in the lower income quintiles, for both sexes and skin colors. We observed higher wealth inequality in sexual violence among girls (CIX = −14.89) when compared with boys (CIX = −4.63) ( p = .001). We also observed higher wealth inequality in sexual violence among Whites (CIX = −15.55) when compared with Brown (CIX = −6.23) ( p = .009). Wealth inequality aggravates the occurrence of violence among poorer Brazilian adolescents. Also, the identification of vulnerable groups may contribute to target public policies for fighting violence.