Human development and regional inequalities in Brazilian municipalities

Human development is a complex term, involving different dimensions, including health, education, employment, income, housing and basic sanitation, which have been constitutionally guaranteed in Brazil since 1988. According to the theme's importance and its academic recognition, the present article analyzes the influence of social conditions on Brazilian municipal human development, based on demographic dimensions. For that, it uses multivariate factor analysis, from which four factors were identified, and then a multinomial logistic regression, applied to all Brazilian municipalities and regions separately. The main result is that municipalities with lower levels of development need to address factors of employment and social vulnerability and of basic sanitation and housing, since these influence public health. In addition, regional inequalities point to different needs for public services, which makes it important to commit management to developing strategies to promote and expand access to basic sanitation services as a priority for improving social conditions and human development.