Understanding Left-Behind Places in a Contrastive Approach

Abstract

How are left-behind places in a country compared to other types of places in an Eastern European country? A typology of local human development is designed and tested for the case of the Romanian society. The United Nations model of human development (structured by the three dimensions of education, economic development and health) is adapted to the local level and two contrasting measures are designed – an index and a typology of local human development. The typology resulted from a cluster analysis. It is validated by bi-variate and multivariate analysis (multinomial regression). High emigration rates, irrespective of the destination, do not bring lower development to the local origin in Romania: the destination of migration counts. There is a higher probability, in 2018, of left-behindness in localities with a higher number of emigrants to Italy in the years preceding 2011. Human development is highly differentiated by destination countries of emigration and by historical subregions. It is especially for such contexts that the quantitative approach could be misleading. Public policy targets could be better identified if qualitative and quantitative approaches are simultaneously used. The proposed approach could be adopted by keeping the same dimensions and measuring them by available and appropriate indicators.