Measurement and agenda for territorial development in Latin America: the Brazilian case

Latin America is recognized as one of the most unequal regions in the world. In addition to the usual studied inequity through the most diverse indicators socioeconomic, Latin America also manifests profound territorial disparities subnational level. Build national development agendas that with temper the different territorial realities suppose an increased challenge due to the COVID-19 pandemic and its consequences, but at the same time a strategy inescapable to find the best routes out of the crisis. As has been pointed out, COVID-19 affects Latin America from a weak starting point in its fiscal situation, in its systems in the loss of confidence in the institutions and with weakening support for democracy. To its time, bare as ever the high heterogeneity that exists between countries and regions. Therefore, more than ever it is necessary to contribute disaggregated information and with a territorial perspective that to identify and address development challenges to the different regions of our continent. So, researchers of eight Latin American countries developed a project turned to build measures to understand this landscape in 183 subnational governments (the second level in each country as unity of analysis). The Index seeks to contribute with four objectives: a) help make visible the multidimensional territorial inequalities in Latin America, contributing the possibility of a measurement methodology compares both within each country and between regions of different countries; b) provide data for public debate and the preparation of public policies in the wide range of topics related to the development of our regions; c) generate new information that is useful for future studies and research, promoting an economic and social research agenda with people territorial perspective; and d) constitute an instrument seeking to incorporate more countries and expand the range of years analyzed, collaborating to a long-term interpretation of gaps and trajectories of regional development in Latin America. The Index is composed and weighted by eight dimensions: education (four variables), health (three variables), welfare state and cohesion (five variables), economic activities (three variables), environment (three variables), gender (two variables), institutions (three variables), and public security (two variables). Considering the methodology developed to build the Latin American Index of Regional Development (IDERE LATAM), the main goal of this paper is to show its application in the Brazilian case. Brazil is a country of superlatives. Analyzing territorial inequality is not a simple task for a country with a continental dimension, heterogeneous and deeply unfair in terms of human development. One of the best-known metaphors on the issue of regional inequality in Brazil, which dates back to the 1950s, is the idea of the existence of two Brazils. The national territory would be divided by a profound heterogeneity that separates the more modern regions of the South and Southeast from the more backward regions of the North and Northeast. The paper seeks to show how IDERE LATAM is a good instrument to measure the Brazilian territorial inequality. The second goal is to contribute with the debate on novel indicators, dimensions, and variables to measure territorial inequality.