Measuring and Ranking the Index of Development Opportunities in the Provinces of Iran

Equality of development opportunities is one of the socio-economic goals and a basic prerequisite for achieving economic stability and integrated progress in a country. In the present research, 69 development indicators related to cultural-social, educational, infrastructure, health-treatment, environmental and economic sectors were analyzed to identify and compare the development opportunities of 30 provinces of Iran. Shannon's entropy method was used to determine the weights of the indicators and the TOPSIS method was used to rank the provinces in terms of access to the opportunities of each sector. Finally, by using the taxonomy technique, the degree of enjoyment of the provinces from a total of six opportunities was evaluated. The results show that there is a deep gap in the distribution and allocation of facilities and opportunities among the provinces of the country. Tehran province was the most privileged and Kurdistan, South Khorasan, Lorestan, West Azerbaijan and North Khorasan provinces were determined as the most deprived provinces. Based on significant difference among provinces, it is recommended that the priorities of the budget allocation be determined according to the degrees of benefits for the provinces.