Access to Infrastructure in Brazilian Dwellings: An Analysis for 1981/2002 (Infra-Estrutura Dos Domicilios Brasileiros: Uma Analise Para O Periodo 1981/2002)

Abstract

Basic infrastructure is an essential component of the quality of life of the citizens. Therefore it should be part of any agenda that involves social goals as reduction of the poverty, improvement in the standard of living, education, health etc. An adequate infrastructure is a necessary condition (even so not enough) for the development of a country. It has also strong connections with the environment: removal of garbage, sanitary sewer, quality of the water etc. This study analyses items of the basic infrastructure essential for the good functioning of the domiciles as well as their evolution during the decades of 1980 and 1990, classified by per capita domiciliary income: availability of electric illumination, water, proper bathroom in the domicile, direct access to the sewer net or septic fosse and garbage collection. The text also presents a basic infrastructure synthesis-index that summarizes itens of basic infrastructure, for urban/rural condition. A generalized linear model is adjusted to the data. We can, then, from the coefficients, quantify the homogeneity (or not) in the evolution of the access to the basic infrastructure items considered. Part of the inequality has to do with the urban/rural dichotomy and regional differences. We group the population in groups of per capita income to present the results. Obviously this ordinance was an option of the authors and it can add a bias, mainly when it includes the agricultural population (less money based) and the urban one in the same set. The social exclusion is multidimensional, but the reduction used in the text served to show that even with a naive ordinance the heterogeneous aspects are clamorous. What we can observe in the two decades of the period of study, 1981/2002, is that the availability of basic infrastructure items presented a generalized improvement, as much in the urban area, as in the agricultural one. The agricultural area always presents a worse condition and this fact explains part of the discrepancies found. The observed improvements do not always present higher speed improvement for the domiciles in the lower income groups, as it would be desirable. The exception is the access to a system of sanitary sewer that presented, mainly in the urban area, growth taxes always favoring the poorer groups.

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Keywords: Infrastructure access modeling, urban infrastructure, rural infrastructure, income differentials

JEL Classification: C13, I31, I32, R12