Height and inequality in Spain: a long-term perspective

Antonio Cámara · José Miguel Martínez-Carrión · Javier Puche · Josep-Maria Ramon-Muñoz

2019

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/revista-de-historia-economica-journal-of-iberian-and-latin-american-economic-history/article/height-and-inequality-in-spain-a-longterm-perspective/47262D4481E55DB6EE589CDA01AA0932

Cámara, A., Martínez-Carrión, J.M., Puche, J. & Ramon-Muñoz, J.M. (2019): “Height and inequality in Spain: a long-term perspective”, Revista de Historia Económica, Journal of Iberian and Latin American Economic History, 37, 2, pp. 205-238.

https://doi.org/10.1017/S0212610919000089

This article analyses the evolution of nutritional inequality in Spain among cohorts born between 1840 and 1964. With male height data (N = 358,253), the secular trend of biological well-being and intergenerational anthropometric inequalities are studied based on the coefficient of variation, height percentiles and socioeconomic categories (students, literate non-students and illiterate). The results reveal that the nutritional inequalities were very large in the mid-19th century. Anthropometric inequalities diminished among those born between 1880 and 1919 and increased again, although only moderately, from the cohorts of the 1920s. From the 1930s there was a cycle of sustained increase in height. Despite nutritional improvement, the data suggest that nutritional inequalities increased during the Franco regime, affecting the low-income population segments particularly.