Abstract

LOPEZ PARDO, Cándido M. Human development and equity in Cuba. Rev Cubana Salud Pública [online]. 2004, vol.30, n.1, pp. 0-0. ISSN 1561-3127.

This paper is aimed at updating the present knowledge on the state of human development and equity in Cuba at territorial scale - provinces are considered as territories- and at making a new application of Human Development and Equity index introduced in the research work on human development and equity in Cuba in 1999 and to analyze the results so far achieved and compare them to the findings of that research. The Human Development and Equity Index comprises eight relevant dimensions of the human development (economic development, personal consumption, educational level, health status of the population, access to basic services, access to energy, quality of housing and political involvement) and each dimension is represented by an indicator considered as tracer of the concept involved in that dimension. The results of the indicators considered in the Index for the country are generally higher in the present issue of the Index than in the previous version. In comparison to the previous Index, in the present calculation of the Index for all the indicators, -except for retail merchandise circulation per capita - the gap had narrowed among the provinces and was very small and practically the same in all cases. The per capita amount of investments was roughly 7 times higher in Ciudad de La Habana than in Pinar del Río, the rest of indicators showed small relative odds ratio. Ciudad de La Habana and Guantánamo were the provinces with the highest and the lowest balance in the attainment of the particular aspects of the human development: variability in Guantánamo was over 3 times higher than that of Ciudad de La Habana. The close linking of homogeneity in the attainment of the analyzed aspects of the human development and the Index reveals that the global development of the provinces is strongly related to the balanced attainment of the partial aspects of the development. The order of the provinces hierarchically classified according to the descending value of the Index in the present version is the following: Ciudad de La Habana, Cienfuegos, La Habana, Ciego de Avila, Matanzas, Sancti Spiritus, Villa Clara, Las Tunas, Pínar del Río, Camagüey, Holguín, Santiago de Cuba, Guantánamo and Gramma

Keywords : HUMAN DEVELOPMENT; EQUITY; ECONOMIC INDEXES; RESIDENCE CHARACTERISTICS; CUBA.