Analysis of social development inequalities among provinces of Iran (emphasis on educational and health indicators)

Introduction: The development process is multidimensional and includes various dimensions. The social dimensions of the development include different indicators such as educational, health indicators and migration, which have received less attention. The first step in solving the problems arising from inequality is to recognize and level the regions. Therefore, the present study was conducted with the aim of assessing the provinces' level of development in terms of educational, health and migration indicators in which 31 provinces of the country were ranked based on 24 indicators. Method: The data of 24 educational, health and migration indicators were acquired through the results of general population and housing census as well as statistical yearbooks in 2018. SPSS, Excel and Arc GIS software were used to analyze the data. Williamson coefficient was applied to evaluate spatial inequality; principal component analysis method to weight indicators and TOPSIS method to construct a composite indicator of provincial development were applied. Finally, the development level of the provinces was classified by GIS method as well as hierarchical cluster analysis. Findings: The results showed that there was the highest inequality in the indicators of the "dropout rate in elementary school" and "ratio of rehabilitation centers to population", and lowest inequality in "junior high school passing rate" and "male literacy rate", respectively. The results of ranking the provinces revealed that the provinces of Charmahal and Bakhtiari, South Khorasan, Semnan, Ilam and Yazd were in the best situation whereas the provinces of Sistan and Baluchestan, Alborz, Tehran, West Azerbaijan and Hormozgan had the lowest rank. This finding, together with the results of hierarchical cluster analysis and GIS maps, confirms the existence of a gap and difference among the provinces of Iran in social development in terms of educational and health indicators such as "ratio of technical and vocational centers to population", "mortality rate among children aged under five years", "net migration rate", etc. Discussion: In order to establish balanced development, it is suggested that any budget be allocated to the less-developed provinces identified in this study.