Regional inequalities of rural development of Rio Grande do Sul: a proposal of multidimensional analysis from three microregions

Abstract

The goal of this paper is to elaborate an Index of Rural Development (IDR) which allows to establish parameters of comparison between indicators of rural development in three microregions of the state of Rio Grande do Sul: Caxias do Sul (Serra), Cerro Largo (Missões) and Frederico Westphalen (Alto Uruguai). The main focus of this work is about the space dimension of development. The IDR was constructed on the basis of secondary data aggregated in five dimensions: social, demographic, political-institutional, economic and environmental. As a result, the study concludes that rural development is diversified in its space manifestations and multifaceted in the dimensions examined in this text, configuring what the literature has described as unequal dynamics of rural development. Key words: rural development ; indicator ; dimension, index