Qualidade de vida nos municípios do Nordeste em relação aos municípios do Brasil: fundamentos para o planejamento do desenvolvimento sustentável da região

Abstract

In this paper we tried to estimate the levels of life quality in the 1,509 counties of Brazilian Northeastern Region when compared to all 4,502 Brazilian counties in accordance with the last Demographic Census of IBGE. In order to achieve that objective, we designed the Index of Relative Development (IRD) which is based on six variables: percentage of the household of the county acessing to safe water; percentage of the household of the county acessing to sanitary services; percentage of literate people over 5 years old; percentage of household acessing to garbage collecting service; average of personal income in the county; Gini index of income distribution in the county. In order to build up the IRD , the multivariate analysis technique was used, through which we have estimated two orthogonal score factors. The result showed that from the 100 counties ranked in the bottom position in terms of life quality, 98 were located in Northeast of Brazil. The research also showed that among the 100 counties ranked in the bottom position in terms of personal income, almost all of them are located in the Northeastern region. This result elucidates how difficult the social and economical status in this region are, and how restric the capacity of this region in creating employments and increase the internal income in the majority of the counties of Northeast.