Desigualdades regionais e desenvolvimento entre as cinco macrorregiões do Brasil

Abstract

This study seeks to deepen and contribute to broadening the debate about macro-regional inequalities in Brazil, namely: North, Northeast, Southeast, South and Midwest. The main objective is to understand, from an historical examination, how was the regional inequalities framework since the colonial period through the twentieth century, and how it currently sets the issue in the twenty-first century. It is intended to thus verify, using quantitative socioeconomic data, the magnitude of these inequalities, and what are the trends that currently occur. The scientific research methodology was based at first on literature sources in order to do a literature review on the issue of regional disparities and the development process in Brazil. Another goal of the literature review was to understand some of the mechanisms that have conditioned and actually influenced that question. We gave preference to brazilian researchers as Caio Prado Junior, Francisco de Oliveira, Celso Furtado and Bresser-Pereira. In a second moment, we proceeded to the collection of secondary data of socio-economic nature, relating to the five geographical regions in order to make a comparison that would allow a current reading of the behavior of these indicators. We used statistical data for the last censuses produced by the Brazilian Institute of Management and Statistics (IBGE), and data from the last surveys of National Research by Household Sample (PNAD). On the results of the research, we understood the problems of regional inequalities had their origins in the colonial period, in which didn’t exist a domestic development project, the regions development was determined by external demand. At one point in history, appeared conditions for the concentration of wealth in the Southeast and from there, throughout the twentieth century, the development process was based on the Southeast as a center and having the Northeast as the periphery of the entire brazilian capitalist system. Inequalities have deepened, and despite the evidence, the regional issue has been successively invisibilized because of political reasons. From the early 2000s, through public policies focused at combating inequality, and successive increases in the minimum real wages are beginning to see some progress in reducing regional disparities.