The municipality of Leme, São Paulo, and its origins

Urban expansion in Brazil during the period from the 1940s to the 1970s, due to various reasons, including the federal government’s policy of encouraging the organization of urban space and, fundamentally, changing the dynamics of rural space organization with industrial development, resulted in significant changes and land occupation. The history of the different stages of development of agricultural activities, based today on sugarcane farming, is responsible for the municipality’s economic stability over the years and has come to define the development of urban activities. Its population has become almost entirely urban, although part of it works in rural areas. The age pyramid of the population is beginning to show characteristics of developed regions, with a smaller base and a wider top. The dependency ratio of the elderly population is also increasing over the years, showing that the profile of the population of the municipality of Leme is changing. This study arrived at these results by analyzing the population dynamics of the last four decades (1980, 1990, 2002, and 2010).