Publication: Hunger in hell’s kitchen : family living conditions during Spanish industrialization : the Bilbao estuary, 1914-1935
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2011-05
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Abstract
Did the late industrialization in Europe’s periphery improve life for its urban
class? This paper examines family living conditions in northern Spain during
late industrialization in the interwar period. We concentrate on the Basque
region, one of the emerging industrial areas from the 1870s on.
Historiography holds that in the medium-term urban development and
industrialization increased real wages and overall standards of living. We
contrast this empirically by examining the effects of income shocks on families
using high frequency data from 1914 until 1936. These contrasts introduce
nutritional adequacy of family diets as an additional way of measuring living
conditions. Our results indicate that real income did not improve and that
demographic and social deprivation variables were highly responsive to short
term economic shocks. This response points to the fragility of urban
breadwinner families even during later phases of industrialization; the urban
penalty was by far not being compensated by the higher nominal wages
received
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Standards of living, Spain, Urbanization, Industrialization, Family, Deprivation, Mortality, Real wages, Interwar period