A descriptive approach to the social and territorial inequality in rural areas of Northwest Argentina in the first decade of the XXI century

Abstract

From the last decades of the twentieth century, the rural sector of the Argentine Northwest was the scene of deep territorial and productive transformations linked to the expansion of extractive activities. The effects of these activities include privatization, concentration and land grabs, generating an increase of social and territorial inequality. The aim of this paper is therefore to analyze the socio-territorial inequality in rural areas of Northwest Argentina in the first decade of the XXI century. Four dimensions were analyzed: poverty, education, habitat quality, and agrarian structure. For the analysis of the first three dimensions, data from national population census 2001 and 2010 were used. For the analysis of the territorial and productive transformations were used data from national agricultural censuses 1988, 2002 and 2008. The results allow us to observe that while the habitat quality and education improved during the first decade of the century, there are high poverty and vulnerability in a context of a progressively unequal agrarian structure.