Neither So Low nor So Short: Wages and Heights in Bourbon Spanish America from an International Comparative Perspective

Abstract

This paper offers new quantitative evidence on living standards in BourbonAmerica through the study of wages and heights. Neither were wages low nor were heights short by the international standards of the period. Thus, living standards of the Spanish Americans compare favourably with those of other regions of the world, including Europe. As in many parts of the West, a trend towards deterioration of real wages is observed in Spanish America at the end of the period. Our findings suggest that the Great Divergence in living standards between Spanish America and the developed Western countries might have taken place mainly after the Independence.

Pre-Independence Spanish Americans: Poor, Short and Unequal… or the Opposite?

“…In the 1750s, «blancos» and «pardos» from Maracaibo, with heights of, respectively, 167.5 and 166 cm, were taller than males in Moravia, France, Low Austria, Bohemia, Russia and Spain (see Martínez Carrión 2012). The claim that «men of Spanish descent» born from the 1750s to the 1770s in Atlixco and Tehuacán (Grajales-Porras and López-Alonso 2011) was 47 Some of them have already been shown in Dobado-González and García-Montero (2014). Compared with Europe, this decline was rather modest: a decrease of 2.5 cm from the 1740s to the 1780s does not seem properly «great», as in many European countries it exceeded 0.9 cm/decade between the 18 thcentury peak and through (Komlos and Küchenhoff 2012).…”

“…The first optimistic example of the «new generation» of research on the material conditions of life of pre-independent Spanish Americans is that of Dobado-González and García-Montero (2009) 6 . The paper was presented at the conference A Comparative Approach to Inequality and Development: Latin America and Europe , organised by Luís Bértola, Leandro Prados de la Escosura and Jeffrey Williamson in Madrid 7 .…”

“…The paper was presented at the conference A Comparative Approach to Inequality and Development: Latin America and Europe , organised by Luís Bértola, Leandro Prados de la Escosura and Jeffrey Williamson in Madrid 7 . In their attempt to put Spanish America on the emerging map of living standards throughout the pre-industrial world, Dobado-González and García-Montero (2009) estimated power purchasing parities of the daily wages of skilled and unskilled workers in terms of the cheapest grain and meat in the early 19 th century for a number of countries in the Americas and Eurasia 8 . In addition, a comparison of grain and meat wages of unskilled workers over the 18 th and early 19 th centuries between Bogota, London, Mexico Milan and Potosi was presented.…”

“…Since 2009, a growing literature dealing with this topic has been made available in different formatscontributions to seminars and conferences, working papers, journal articles and book chaptersto the international academic community of economic historians (Dobado-González and García-Montero 2009Dobado-González 2010;Dobado and Marrero 2011;Allen et al 2011Allen et al , 2012Bassino and Ma 2006;Broadberry and Gupta 2006;Allen et al 2011a;Bassino et al 2011). Since 2009, a growing literature dealing with this topic has been made available in different formatscontributions to seminars and conferences, working papers, journal articles and book chaptersto the international academic community of economic historians (Dobado-González and García-Montero 2009Dobado-González 2010;Dobado and Marrero 2011;Allen et al 2011Allen et al , 2012Bassino and Ma 2006;Broadberry and Gupta 2006;Allen et al 2011a;Bassino et al 2011).…”

“…Living standards in pre-independent Spanish America have recently attracted more scholarly interest than ever before. Since 2009, a growing literature dealing with this topic has been made available in different formats — contributions to seminars and conferences, working papers, journal articles and book chapters — to the international academic community of economic historians (Dobado-González and García-Montero 2009, 2010, 2014; Dobado-González 2010; Dobado and Marrero 2011; Allen et al . 2011, 2012; Arroyo-Abad et al 2011, 2012; Arroyo-Abad 2014; Challú and Gómez-Galvarriato 2014).…”