Infra-Estrutura dos Domicílios Brasileiros: Uma análise para o Período 1981-2002

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 ofthe poverty, improvement in the standard of living, education, health etc. Anadequate infrastructure is a necessary condition (even so not enough) for thedevelopment of a country. It has also strong connections with the environment:removal of garbage, sanitary sewer, quality of the water etc. This study analyses itemsof the basic infrastructure essential for the good functioning of the domiciles as wellas their evolution during the decades of 1980 and 1990, classified by per capitadomiciliary income: availability of electric illumination, water, proper bathroom inthe domicile, direct access to the sewer net or septic fosse and garbage collection. Thetext also presents a basic infrastructure synthesis-index that summarizes itens of basicinfrastructure, for urban/rural condition. A generalized linear model is adjusted to thedata. We can, then, from the coefficients, quantify the homogeneity (or not) in theevolution of the access to the basic infrastructure items considered. Part of theinequality has to do with the urban/rural dichotomy and regional differences. Wegroup the population in groups of per capita income to present the results. Obviouslythis ordinance was an option of the authors and it can add a bias, mainly when itincludes the agricultural population (less money based) and the urban one in thesame set. The social exclusion is multidimensional, but the reduction used in the textserved to show that even with a naïve ordinance the heterogeneous aspects areclamorous. What we can observe in the two decades of the period of study,1981/2002, is that the availability of basic infrastructure items presented ageneralized improvement, as much in the urban area, as in the agricultural one. Theagricultural area always presents a worse condition and this fact explains part of thediscrepancies found. The observed improvements do not always present higher speedimprovement 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 theurban area, growth taxes always favoring the poorer groups.