Table 1.

Description of variables.

Variable	Description
Outcomes
Health Care
Private Health Insurance	Dummy variable that equals one when the child has private health insurance
Medicine Use	Dummy variable that equals one when the child took medicines in the 2 weeks previous, including vitamin or medicine for fever.
Private Health Insurance Expenditures	Out-of-pocket expenditure (monthly premiums) on private health insurance (BRL).
Medicine Expenditures	Out-of-pocket expenditure for medicines on children in the 30 days previous to the interview (BRL).
Sum of Expenditures	Sum of out-of-pocket expenditure on medicines; private health insurance; Doctor's appointments; laboratory tests and r-rays; and others for children in the 30 days previous to the interview (BRL).
Non-Need Variables
Income	Natural logarithm of income that is the sum of income (last month) of all household individuals divided by square root of household member number.
Asset Index	Construction of one index using principal components analysis (in quintiles at wave). Variables used (the child has in his household): vacuum cleaner; washing machine; DVD; refrigerator; microwave; computer; cell phone; TV; automobile; air conditioner.
Mother's Education	Mother's education in years.
Partner	Dummy variable that equals one when the mother lives with a partner
Mother's skin colour	Dummy variable, white = 1; brown, black, other = 0.
Need Variables
Children's Characteristics
Sex	Dummy variable, girl = 1; boy = 0.
Reported Health	Children's health reported by mother, categorical variable (excellent = 1, very good = 2, good = 3, regular and bad = 4).
Wheezing Chest	Child had wheezing in the Chest in the last 12 months: yes = 1, no = 0.
Chronic Disease	Dummy variable that equals one when the child has chronic diseases, physical problem or learning disability.
Low Birthweight	Dummy variable that equals zero when the child was born with a weight below 2500 g
Hospitalization	Dummy variable that equals one when the child was hospitalized during the first year of life.
Earache	Dummy variable that equals one when the child had an earache pain during the first year of life.
Pneumonia	Dummy variable that equals one when the child had pneumonia during the first year of life.
Urinary Infection	Dummy variable that equals one when the child had urinary infection during the first year of the life.
Breastfeeding Duration	Breastfeeding duration in months classified in following five categories: 0; 1 to 3; 4 to 5; 6 to 11; and 12 months or more.
Mother's characteristics
Age	Mother's age in years.
Smoked during pregnancy	Dummy variable that equals zero when the child's mother smoked during the pregnancy.
Self-reported health	Mother's reported health, categorical variable (excellent = 1, very good = 2, good = 3, regular and bad = 4).

Notes: Mother's education was unavailable at wave 12 months. In this case, we used the values from the first wave (perinatal). Income and health expenditure variables were deflated for December 2011 (R$-BRL). Less than 1% of income values were zero, and they were transformed as 1 (R$) for the use of natural log. For mother's and child's reported health, the categories regular and bad were joined because the proportion of individuals responding bad is very small.