A Regional Human Development Index for Portugal

Abstract

In a report from 2008 the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development came to the conclusion that Portugal is still a country very much marked by regional asymmetries and in need of better regional governance mechanisms and policies. In the face of these conclusions it becomes important to address the issue of constructing an index of regional development for Portuguese regions to better assess the evolution of the differential between regions. We propose a regional human development index for Portugal at the NUTS III level, based on the methodology of the Human Development Index (HDI) from the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). Results show us a country that has most of the highest ranked NUTS III positioned in the coastline, although some interior NUTS III regions improve their relative positions in the ranking between 2004 and 2008. Additionally to the traditional dimensions of the HDI, we also added two dimensions, that we choose to include, given the main criticisms pointed in the literature to the HDI - governance and environment. Results show some significative differences when we add the environment dimension, but in terms of governance they don't change significantly.Human Development Index, Regional Asymmetries, Portugal.