The Geography of Access to Basic Services in Brazil

This chapter analyzes the long-term path of access to public services in Brazil from 1970 to 2010. It shows that the supply of services completely changed over this period, from widespread lack of basic services in 1970 to high levels of coverage in 2010. However, the path of such expansion had a distinctly regional pattern, to the extent that it cannot be fully explained by an individual’s income. Instead, the path of coverage expansion is characterized by a strong association between access to services, on the one hand, and the wealth of jurisdictions along with the profile of its population income on the other hand. Progress in the production of wealth tends to be accompanied by reduction in the percentage of poor and by expansion in the supply of basic services. Improvements in coverage rates also followed a fairly clear spatial pattern: the Southeast region, Brazil’s wealthiest, and particularly the state of Sao Paulo, was better served in the 1970s and moved toward universalization as early as the 1980s. The expansion of coverage toward universalization occurred subsequently in the South and Central-West regions, which happen to be in an intermediary position with regard to wealth and concentrated poverty. Yet the North and Northeast regions, Brazil’s poorest, only achieved high coverage levels when the service in question had already achieved universal levels in the three previously mentioned regions. This chapter relies on data collected in Brazilian censuses from 1970 to 2010.