Nutrition and growth in Italy, 1861–1911: What macroeconomic data hide

Abstract

Abstract:We investigate how nutritional status responded to economic growth in Italy during 1861-1911. By combining household-level data on food consumption with population censuses , we estimate that the incidence of undernutrition decreased by about 10-15 percent between 1881 and 1901. Consumption of calories responded elastically to income changes, although declining with the level of household income: on average, income elasticity of calories in 1901 was in the range of 0.3-0.6. Malnutrition, defined as the inadequate intake of macro-and micro-nutritients, was reduced. Overall, our findings do not support the pessimists' view, ubiquitous in the Italian literature. On the contrary, the early phase of Italian industrialization was beneficial to the nutritional status of the bulk of the population, and even more so for the poorest among the poor.

Two Italies? Genes, intelligence and the Italian North–South economic divide

“…The economic decline of Italy, from the 17th until the end of the 19th century, reduced internal economic differences (Malanima, 2002). At the time of political unification, in 1861, Italy was a relatively backward country; the North-South differences in per capita GDP were very modest, there were very small differences in some indicators, such as life expectancy at birth or infant mortality, while nutrition standards were higher in the South (Daniele & Malanima, 2011b;Davis, 2006;Vecchi & Coppola, 2006). Profound disparities, instead, existed in educational levels.…”

On Historical Household Budgets

“…9 Following in their footsteps, other scholars have used historical household budgets to study a range of themes. These include diet and nutrition (Vecchi and Coppola, 2006;Logan, 2006Logan, , 2009Gazeley and Horrell, 2013;Gazeley and Newell, 2015;Lundh, 2013), inequality and poverty (Rossi et al 2001, Amendola andVecchi, 2016), intra-household dynamics (Horrell and Oxley, 2013;Saaritsa and Kaihovaara, 2016;Scott, Walker and Miskell, 2015;Guyer, 1980), labor force participation (Baines and Johnson, 1999), child labor (Moehling, 2001(Moehling, , 2005, consumption behavior (Scott and Walker, 2012;Lilja and Bäcklund, 2013), agriculture and home-production (Federico, 1986(Federico, , 1991, economies of scale and child well-being (Hatton and Martin, 2010;Logan, 2011), and informal transfers of cash and goods between households (Saaritsa, 2008(Saaritsa, , 2011.…”

Heights and human welfare: Recent developments and new directions

“…Countries that industrialized after the revolution in public health inspired by the germ theory of disease either had minor height cycles or experienced sustained upward trends, as was the case in Germany (Twarog 1997); the Habsburg monarchy (Komlos 2006); Poland (Kopczynski 2007); Portugal (Padez and Johnston 1999;Padez 2002;Padez 2003); Spain (Gomez-Mendoza and Perez-Moreda 1995; Carrión and Castejón 1998;Martinez-Carrion and Moreno-Lazaro 2007); Italy (Vecchi and Coppola 2006); Argentina (Salvatore 2009); Hungary (Gyenis and Joubert 2004); and Sweden (Sandberg and Steckel 1997). Australia is a borderline case, industrializing (or more properly, modernizing) during the public health movement and experiencing a modest swing in stature (Jackson and Thomas 1995;Whitwell, de Souza et al 1997;Whitwell and Nicholas 2001).…”

“…Engerman invokes stature to help place the standard of living debate into international perspective (Engerman 1997). Komlos discusses heights in the context of the biological standard of living and Vecchi and Giovanni explore the deficiencies of traditional macro data using height as an alternative (Komlos 1995b;Vecchi and Coppola 2006). Chakravarty incorporates stature into a human poverty index, which concentrates on deprivation in the basic necessities of life (Chakravarty and Majumder 2005), and Wilk argues that stature is legitimately part of any effort to compare the quality of life (Wilk 1999).…”