By Tamara Santos.
The Brazilian Human Development Atlas 2013 was launched last July based on the new Municipal Human Development Index (MHDI), and itbrings data for the 5,565 Brazilian municipalities, which is available free of charge through an online platform.
Anyone can access the data pertaining to education,longevity and income across over 180 indicators used to calculate the local MHDI. This new tool will benefit the population as whole: as citizens, members of the academy and policy makers will have the opportunity to carry out the planning and effective monitoring of public policies.
According to Marcelo Neri, President of the Brazilian Institute for Applied Economic Research (Ipea) and Interim Minister of the Secretariat of Strategic Affairs (SAE) of the Brazilian Presidency, in a statement during the launching ceremony of the Atlas Brasil,“this new platform portraits Brazil in the last two decades, a periodin which intense socio-economic transformation took place”.
Besides statistics based on 2010 Brazil’s Demographic Census data, the Atlas also brings the indices from the mappings previously done in 1991 e 2000 revised, as an efforts to display such changes. The indicators were revised according the new MHDI methodology and classified asvery low, low, medium, high and very high human development.
The Brazilian MHDI was measured across 3 groups. Firstly, the Long and Healthy Life classification measured the life expectancy at birth. Secondly, theAccess to Knowledge measured the percentage of people over 18 years old with complete elementary education, the percentage of children between 5 and 6 years old enrolled in primary school, the percentage of children between 11 and 13 years old in the last elementary school years, the percentage of teenagers between 15 and 17 years old with complete primary schools, and the percentage of adults between 18 and 20 years old with complete high school. Thirdly, the Living Standard classification analyses the monthly per capita income.
The groups were cross-referenced by over two hundred human development indicators, which classified each municipality according to the standards defined by global development levels.
According to the study, in 1991, 85.8% of the Brazilian Municipalities were classified under the very low human development index. Currently, only 32 municipalities are under this classification, which represents 0.57% of the overall number. Furthermore, 50% of the Brazilian Municipalities had already met theMillennium Development Goals (MDGs).
With the analysis of the human development index in Brazil, it is possible to notice that the MHDI increased significantly, whilst the inequality indices among the low income and the high-income population has declined. Actually, the income of the poorest population has grown 5 times faster than the income of the richest population. This fact suggests that the social programmes being implemented in the past two decades are contributing to inclusive growth in Brazil.
According to Jorge Chediek, Resident Coordinator of the United Nations Systems, Resident Representative of the United Nations Development Proframme in Brazil and Director of International Policy Centre for Inclusive Growth (IPC-IG/PNUD), also at the launching ceremony of the Atlas Brasil, “the Atlas is a tool todemocratize information, which in turn can assist in the improvement of public policies”. The map below highlights the inequality reduction among the northern and southern regions in the last two decades – the northern being the poorest region and the southeast the richest one.
“IDHM evolution between 1991 and 2010: most municipalities left the situation of very low human development, which are represented in red. Photo: IDHM 2013.” Source: UN Brazil.
The Atlas was developed in a partnership between the United Nations Development Programme in Brazil (UNDP Brazil), the João Pinheiro Foundation (FJP) of the Government of the State of Minas Gerais and theBrazilian Institute for Applied Economic Research (Ipea).
The Atlas was successful in mapping the actual socio-economic picture of Brazilian municipalities. Currently, to enhance the reach of the research developed, UNDP Brazil announced it will launch next year an index per neighborhoods of sixteen metropolitan regions in Brazil based on the same model used by the MHDI.
The project will research and bring dtata for all the neighborhoodsinSão Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Brasília, Belo Horizonte, Porto Alegre, Curitiba, Salvador, Fortaleza, Recife, Belém, Manaus, Goiânia, Vitória, Cuiabá, São Luís e Natal, the main metropolitan cites representing the five geographical regions in Brazil.
The map aims to provide a wider picture of the socio-economic situation of cities whilst displaying inequalities and identifying the areas lacking social assistance. The new study will bring insights to assist in the policy-making of social protection programmes, as policy-makers will have reliable data to take in consideration when designing social protection policies and the reach and scope of public services, which in turn will enable policies to reach those socially insecure.
This new study is important to assist local policies due to the fact that even within the richer areas, there are still poverty belts, which only appear in more focused studies. Thus, the proposal is to identify the possible gaps left by past policies. To make the project possible, UNDP Brazil is working in partnership with state institutions to divide the metropolitan areas into “human development units”.
Studies such as this initiative are crucial for inclusive growth and to reduce inequality and poverty, as they enable the analysis of the implementation of social protection programmes, which brings verified data to target the people in need, as well as they provide data to not only assist in the policy-making, but also in the design of future programmes.
