Título
Inequality and Well-Being in Iberian and Latin American Regions since 1820. New Approaches from Anthropometric History
Autores
José Miguel Martínez-Carrión · Ricardo D. Salvatore
Año de publicación
2019
Citación
Martínez-Carrión, José M. and Salvatore, Ricardo D. (2019): “Inequality and Well-Being in Iberian and Latin American Regions since 1820. New Approaches from Anthropometric History. Introduction”, Revista de Historia Económica – Journal of Iberian and Latin American Economic History, 37 (2), pp. 193-204.
Abstract
Anthropometric history is a well-established discipline in Iberian and Latin American regions. The need to have alternative measures of the standard of living in order to explore the past evolution of economies and societies when conventional indicators were not available has been an important consideration among researchers. In an effort to reconstruct historical series of stature, scholars of the region have produced over a hundred studies that combine insights from history, economics, medicine, biology, and physical anthropology. In the last fifteen years, the anthropometric history literature has increased remarkably with important findings about the long-term biological living standards. In some cases, scholars established quite ambitious goals, such as reconstructing the evolution of heights from the late-colonial period to the new era of globalization, delineating clear trajectories of health and nutrition. We know the main features of the variations of heights during the last two centuries and the regional; we know also that social and ethnic differences were substantial. It is not the occasion here to provide a detailed description of the findings made during these two decades. Therefore, this introductory essay only highlights the main contributions of this volume and briefly discusses the meaning of its findings in the recent Ibero-American anthropometric history.
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