Desarrollo humano territorial: medición de la disparidad entre los departamentos. Uruguay, 2008-2018

Two alternative well-being measures are presented, conceptually inspired by Sen's capabilities approach, and calculated for the departments of Uruguay, a country with a very high Human Development Index (HDI) according to UNDP. The first measure modifies the HDI considering alternative indicators within the traditional dimensions, while the second incorporates additional dimensions to the HDI. These two proposed metrics are compared with each other and with the traditional measurement considering the territorial differences of the indicators, through the elaboration of rankings and the elaboration of longitudinal clusters of departments which simultaneously consider the spatial and temporal dimension. It is found that the metric used affects both the ordering of the departments and the conformation of the clusters, validating the relevance of exploring alternative measures. In particular, departments with a very high HDI present average performance in the alternative measures. However, the conformation of the group with low performances is relatively stable regardless of the metric used. This paper provides tools for the temporal and spatial analysis of well-being in countries with a high or very high HDI, contributing to the discussion on the design of appropriate indicators of well-being at the subnational level.