Federalismo no Brasil: análise da descentralização financeira da perspectiva das cidades médias

Resumo

The objective of this paper is to analyze the impacts upon the intermediate size cities of the administrative and fiscal decentralization policy put under way by the Federal Constitution of 1988. By intermediate size cities is meant those ones with urban population in the range 100,000 - 500,000 inhabitants. Our interest in this set of cities lies in the fact that they are the ones with the highest population growth rates in the 1970/96 period. This demographic expansion puts pression on the demand for public social services available in these cities, with no assurance thatthese municipalities will be financially able to expand them. This article adresses to this question using agregated and regional data on financial revenues/expenditures for these cities and their social infraestructure indicators as well. One of the major results is that the metropolitan medium size cities, besides showing high demographic growth rates, are the ones with the smallest social indices and in which, due to thenhigh poverty levels, are consequently the municipalities for which the fiscal extraction is harder.