BACKGROUND

• In Brazil, nursing became an officially recognized profession in the 1920s.
• At present, nursing is a major labor force in the public and private health systems in the country. 
• The goal of this paper is to present a demographic overview of the nursing population based on data from the two most recent Brazilian national censuses.

METHODS

We accessed the 2000 and 2010 National Brazilian Censuses sample data and retrieved information on those respondents who reported having a nursing degree at the undergraduate level. We also obtained data on the following variables: gender, age, color or race, per capita household income, marital status, and migration (whether the respondent was born in the same municipality where he/she was interviewed by the census taker).

RESULTS

According to the national censuses, there were 47,017 nurses in Brazil in 2000, and 166,926 in 2010 (Table 1). Some of the major trends from 2000 to 2010 were the following: increase in the proportion of male nurses; increase in the age group 20-39 years; who self-classified as “black” and “brown”; increase in the proportion of those who reported receiving wages below 2 minimum wages  and decrease in the group > 10; decrease in the proportion of nurses who were non-migrant (Table 1).

There was little variation in the geographical distribution of the nursing population from 2000 to 2010 (Figure 1). Nearly half of the nurses lived in the Southeast region both in 2000 and 2010.

FINAL CONSIDERATIONS

• There was a significant increase in the number of nurses from 2000 and 2010 in Brazil. Reflecting the strong geographical concentration of the general Brazilian population, nearly half of the nurses in both censuses lived in the Southeast region.
• Over the decade, there was an increase of male nurses. The total nursing population in Brazil also became younger and reported receiving lower salaries in 2010 compared to 2000.
• The most likely explanation for these variations relate to the increase in the number of nursing schools in Brazil, which grew from nearly 176 to 799 from 2000 to 2010 according to the Brazilian Ministry of Education.