The Analysis and Classification of Welfare Indexes and the Determination of Priority of Development in Iranian Provinces Using Factor and Cluster Analyses

Access to various factors such as natural, economic, social and political elements create or deteriorate regional inequalities considering harmonious regional development, reducing regional and sectional heterogeousness and inequalities. Regional policies and planning for the purposes that change according to the structural features, the amenities and limitations of a region involve studying and recognition of the features of each region based on the location of that region in the whole regional system. In this research, different provinces in the country have been studied and compared based on economic, cultural, sanitation and curative, service, welfare and physical urban planning factors. They are ranked according to diffetrent indexes. The process of the analysis of the statistical data is based on factor and cluster analyses. Results show that according to the development level and based on the indexes mentioned above, Tehran is the first in ranking and Khorasan-razavi, Esfahan, Fars, Eastern Azerbaijan, Khuzestan, Kerman and Guilan occupy the next positions. West Azerbaijan, Yazd, Markazi, Hamedan and Kerman shah are fairly low in the ranking and other provinces are very low. After we determined the development level of each region, one can conclude that the facilities and amenities in the level and very low level provinces should be improved. Therefore, knowledge of development these provinces help us know the strong and weak points and also the potentials and shortages of these provinces and this finally leads to a successful regional planning.