{"id":229056,"date":"2017-01-02T16:31:24","date_gmt":"2017-01-02T18:31:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/?p=229056"},"modified":"2017-01-02T16:31:24","modified_gmt":"2017-01-02T18:31:24","slug":"a-country-in-statistics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/a-country-in-statistics\/","title":{"rendered":"A country in statistics"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Posters

IBGE Collection<\/span><\/a> Posters advertising the censuses that count the number of Brazil\u2019s inhabitants every 10 yearsIBGE Collection<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

Until the 1930s, statistical records produced in Brazil were sporadic and inexact.\u00a0 Despite efforts to obtain standardized data on a regular basis to better understand Brazil from the geographical and cartographic standpoint, the country navigated the early decades of the 20th<\/sup> century without the benefit of an organized collection of information that depicted the actual size of its territory and its agricultural, manufacturing and commercial potential.\u00a0 It was the goal of modernizing, and above all centralizing, the tools used in studies and statistical surveys of various aspects of Brazilian life that led to the May 29, 1936 establishment of the Brazilian Institute for Geography and Statistics (IBGE), which is now turning 80.<\/p>\n

The IBGE emerged within an historical context marked by the perceived need to promote national development, a process that would have to involve federal government leadership.\u00a0 This effort involved modernizing and centralizing technical tools, such as statistical data, at the federal level.\u00a0 The need for an agency that could house these data led M\u00e1rio Augusto Teixeira de Freitas, then director of statistics at the Ministry of Education, to develop a territorial data management model in which operational decisions could be concentrated in a single coordinating body.\u00a0 \u201cEstablishment of IBGE, at the time known as the National Institute of Statistics (INE), represented a movement to revive Brazilian statistics in operational terms and expand data collection activities related to subjects of interest to this country,\u201d says historian Nelson Senra, an agency researcher.<\/p>\n

\"Campaign

IBGE Collection<\/span><\/a> Campaign truck advertising the 1950 censusIBGE Collection<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

Geography was added to the INE within a few months after its establishment.\u00a0 In November 1936, during the National Statistics Convention, Ambassador Jos\u00e9 Carlos de Macedo Soares, then director of the Institute, underscored the need to draw up physical and political charts of state territories, indicating the boundaries of their municipalities.\u00a0 However, there was no agency exclusively devoted to producing geographical surveys and providing information about the location of areas to be covered by the censuses that could provide geographic data to the statistical surveys.\u00a0 In March 1937, the Brazilian Council of Geography (CBG) was established and later assumed responsibility for projects involving nationwide territorial reconnaissance.
\n\u201cThe CBG became part of the INE on January 26, 1938 and geography and cartography began to play an essential role in the quality of Brazilian statistical surveys,\u201d says cartographic engineer Cl\u00e1udio Jo\u00e3o dos Santos in the Department of Cartographic Engineering of the School of Engineering at the State University of Rio de Janeiro (UERJ).<\/p>\n

According to Santos, the IBE was given such importance that then-president Get\u00falio Vargas (1882-1954) suggested the agency be set up at the Pal\u00e1cio do Catete in Rio de Janeiro, then headquarters of the executive branch and official presidential residence.\u00a0 In 1938, Vargas decreed that the 1,540 Brazilian municipalities must prepare maps of their territories.\u00a0 \u201cMunicipalities that did not submit maps by 1940 would have their territory annexed to the neighboring municipality,\u201d Santos explains.\u00a0 \u201cThey all submitted their maps.\u201d\u00a0 In those days, foreign geographers would come to Brazil to train the IBGE geographers, encouraging them to study abroad, especially in France, Germany and the United States.\u00a0 \u201cThis exchange resulted in geographic studies on different regions of Brazil,\u2019 explains cartographic engineer Luiz Henrique Castiglione at the UERJ School of Engineering.<\/p>\n

\"Census

IBGE Collection<\/span><\/a> Census material ready to be sent to Goi\u00e1s State a few days before work began in 1950IBGE Collection<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

In 1941, Teixeira de Freitas drafted and submitted to Vargas the Basic Plan for Brazil, a document that presented a series of proposals regarding the Institute and national integration.\u00a0 Aspects of the plan included such things as administrative and territorial restructuring and moving the capital to the center of Brazil.\u00a0 In 1942, beginning with the official adoption of Brazil\u2019s division into five geographic regions proposed by Rio de Janeiro engineer F\u00e1bio de Macedo Soares Guimar\u00e3es (see Pesquisa FAPESP<\/em> Issue n\u00ba 158<\/a>), the IBGE expanded its activities to studies of human and regional geography.\u00a0 \u201cWe needed to rediscover Brazil and delve into all aspects of its reality that up to that point were unknown,\u201d Senra says.\u00a0 To this end, IBGE adopted as its methodology field expeditions that would allow detailed observations of the process of territorial occupation and first-hand studies of how Brazilian spaces were being transformed.<\/p>\n

In 1943, the expedition to Jalap\u00e3o began a period of three decades of geographic excursions to study the region located in the area between the states of Goi\u00e1s (currently the state of Tocantins) and Bahia.\u00a0 In 1949, the Institute signed an agreement with the S\u00e3o Francisco River Valley Commission to carry out geological surveys of the river basin and investigate potential sites for construction of the Paulo Afonso Hydroelectric Complex.\u00a0 In 1953, the Institute toured the entire transition area between the Amazon and the Central-West and Northeast regions, resulting in the study entitled Delimita\u00e7\u00e3o da Amaz\u00f4nia para fins de planejamento econ\u00f4mico<\/em> [Delimitation of the Amazon Region for economic planning purposes], published in the Revista Brasileira de Geografia,<\/em> a science journal published by the Institute from 1939-1996 that in August 2016 will be reintroduced to commemorate the 80th<\/sup> anniversary of IBGE.<\/p>\n

\"Recording

IBGE collection <\/span><\/a> Recording data in 1940IBGE collection <\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

The IBGE\u2019s demographic, social and economic studies have been instrumental in building its credibility and stature over the decades, this according to Simon Schwartzman, agency president from 1994-1998 and now a researcher at the Institute for Research on Work and Society.\u00a0 Beginning in the 1970s, the IBGE became a public foundation and began to focus on economic statistics, deploying new methods and technologies to generate data about all aspects of economic growth, size and distribution of the population, employment, education, income, price indices and national accounts.<\/p>\n

With the large number of services offered, the acronym IBGE became well known to Brazilians thanks to the massive demographic censuses that count Brazil\u2019s inhabitants every 10 years and gather specific information about population.\u00a0 \u201cOne of the merits of the institute over these 80 years has been its ability to constantly maintain technical and professional staff that enabled it to carry out its work, without interruptions or drastic changes in direction,\u201d says Schwartzman.\u00a0 On the other hand, he adds that the\u00a0 IBGE became less important in terms of producing territorial maps and data, which are now published by large international companies, although it continues to produce maps and charts with the Brazilian Army Geographic Service.<\/p>\n

Schwartzman says that the Institute\u2019s main challenge in recent decades has been uncertainty with regard to funding, which sometimes prevents important work from being carried out.\u00a0 It recently had to cancel two large-scale research studies due to lack of funds as a result of budget cuts:\u00a0 the 2016 Agricultural Census and the 2016 Population Count, whose estimated costs were R$330.8 million and R$2.6 billion, respectively.\u00a0 Schwartzman thinks one area in which the agency could play a more prominent role is with regard to the environment, by combining geographic, climatic, economic and social data to monitor the status of Brazil\u2019s environment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The IBGE has modernized its social and economic statistics in Brazil","protected":false},"author":346,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[152],"tags":[241],"coauthors":[662],"class_list":["post-229056","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-retrospect","tag-history"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229056","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/346"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=229056"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229056\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=229056"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=229056"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=229056"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=229056"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}