The Quality of Life and Regional Convergence in Iranian Provinces

Regional disparities are one of the main problems in developing countries and Iranian provinces suffer from such disparities. Balanced growth of all provinces of the country has been considered essential for sustainable development. By constructing Human Development Index (HDI) over the period 1996, 2006 and 2011 and four indicators included access to clean water, employment rate, economic participation and average urban income, the main purpose of this paper is to investigate the situation and tendencies in the field of quality of life in Iran based on comparison, convergence and investigates whether there exits convergence in human development indicators. The results of this study reveal that, within the analyzed period, generally the order of provinces in terms of quality of life has not changed, but HDI, access to clean water and average income levels have been increased and the relative convergence with both in unconditional â-convergence and ó-convergence analyses has been occurred. Moreover, the result