In many countries around the world the chances of being poor, illiterate, or sick are strongly determined by one’s place of residence within the country. For instance, while in Colombia a person from the Choco province has a 68% chance of being poor, only 11.6% of people living in Bogota are in poverty. In Mexico, one of every five persons living in the state of Chiapas is illiterate, whereas only one in every 45 persons in Nuevo Leon faces this situation. In Peru, a child in Huancavelica has three times more of a chance of dying at an early age than a child in Lima. 

These examples suggest that place of residence within a country acts as an important source of inequality in social development. In fact, geographical space can be just as or even more important than race, gender, and class as a determinant of differential access to opportunities and wellbeing.

This dissertation seeks to understand subnational inequality in social development by answering one main question: why are some countries more successful than others at reducing within country unevenness in in education, health and sanitation? Through a qualitative comparative analysis of two social policy sectors in two Latin American countries I show that autonomous technocrats, in conjunction with weakened subnational elites and economic resources, have prompted territorial equalization in countries with high subnational disparities.