Height and Inequality in Spain: A Long-Term Perspective

Abstract

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.

Rural Height Penalty or Socioeconomic Penalization? The Nutritional Inequality in Backward Spain

“…It is more, once the agrarian crisis was ended, the internal heterogeneity of our height sample tended to stagnate and, later, to decline. From this perspective, it should be noted that, unlike some areas of Spain [44] but in correspondence with others [33], in Extremadura the inverse relationship that showed the anthropometric inequality (coefficient of variation) with respect to physical growth (average stature) during the first globalization did not lose consistency in the course of the 20th century.…”

“…This fact makes it possible to identify students among the social groups with the highest income and, therefore, with a best access to nutrition, hygiene, and health. It is not by chance that all research carried out so far in Spain coincide in pointing to the students as the tallest of all the conscripts recruited in the course of the 19th and 20th centuries [ 44 ].…”

Inequality and Well-Being in Iberian and Latin American Regions Since 1820. New Approaches From Anthropometric History

“… 3 For Spain, see Cámara, Martínez-Carrión, Puche and Ramon-Muñoz (2019); Argentina, Salvatore (2019a); Chile, Llorca-Jaña, Araya, Navarrete and Droller (2019); Brazil, Franken (2019); Colombia, Meisel, Ramirez and Santos (2019); Mexico, López-Alonso and Vélez-Grajales (2019). …”

Disparities in Height and Urban Social Stratification in the First Half of the 20th Century in Madrid (Spain)

“…Differences in height remained at the end of the period (1.20 cm, cohort born in 1953), in spite of height of conscripts born in the lower-class district increasing faster than among their peers of middle and upper-class districts. Correspondingly, the CV increased to over 4% in mid-1920s and remained around this value during the next two decades, over those values established for European [49] and Spanish military series [50,51].…”