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.

By using military records and population censuses this article investigates the relationship between sibship size and the biological living standards of young males, as measured by height. Focusing on a medium-sized industrial town in Catalonia the analysis shows that the impact of sibship size on child outcomes, as hypothesised by the resource dilution explanation, was rather weak during the years of the first fertility transition. Sibship size affected the height of young males only in certain socioeconomic groups and in specific periods of time, and not always in the expected direction. The article also explores the potential role of confounding factors in the link between sibship size and height, as well as the complexity of this relationship.

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