Diversity of economic landscapes and common land persistence in 19th century Spain: an interpretative proposal

The massive land privatization that took place over the 19th century deeply transformed the Spanish economic landscape. Nevertheless, the outcome of the process was quite different, both in pace and impact, depending on the geographic area we analyze. The explanation for this regional diversity in the persistence of common lands has been attributed to the institutional and environmental context, together with the level of market penetration that characterized the different rural societies. However, the important role that the commons themselves played in this process has been often overlooked. The aim of this paper is to complement those previous explanations by proposing a model that focuses on the collective land remaining, at any given moment, as a crucial explanatory variable and to provide an interpretative framework that would contribute to unveiling the complexity of a process that led to so many different outcomes.Common lands, privatisation, Spain, 19th century.

Social and environmental filters to market incentives: common land persistence in 19th century Spain

The regional diversity of communal persistence in 19th century Spain has been well documented by historiography. Although the explanation of this divergence has been attributed to the social and environmental context, together with the prevailing market incentives that characterized the different rural societies of this period, there has been no clear assessment of the role played by each. Through a comparative study of the historical data at the provincial level, this paper analyzes the relative contribution of these elements to that divergence. The results diminish the significance of market signals and show how the social and environmental conditions of these communities interacted to limit, or promote, the dismantling of the common lands.Spain, 19th Century, common lands, privatization, socio-ecological context

Death, sex, and fertility: female infanticide in rural Spain, 1750-1950

Relying on longitudinal micro data from rural Spain between 1750 and 1950, this article evidences that families mortally neglected a significant fraction of their female babies. Firstly, baptism records exhibited exceptionally high sex ratios at birth until the late nineteenth century. Secondly, having no previous male siblings increased the probability of male baptisms. Likewise, this same feature, together with the number of siblings alive, also increased female mortality during the first day of life. These findings are concentrated at higher parities and among landless and semi-landless families. Lastly, under-registration cannot explain these patterns affecting female mortality shortly after birth

Missing girls in Liberal Italy, 1861–1921

By relying on the number of (surviving) boys per hundred girls observed in the population censuses as a cumulative measure of differential mortality during birth, infancy, and childhood, this paper shows that average Italian child sex ratios (aged 0–4) were abnormally high between 1861 and 1921. Our estimations indicate that unexplained excess female mortality resulted in around 2–3 per cent of ‘missing girls’ during this period. Likewise, by constructing a new dataset on child sex ratios at the provincial level during the same period, this article shows that child sex ratios tended to be higher in Southern Italy, a geographical cleavage that became stronger as time went by. Crucially, the results reported here cannot be explained by registration issues because (1) the analysis holds if we focus on the sex ratios of older children (aged 5–9) and (2) these patterns are also clearly visible using death registers. Unexplained excess female mortality early in life disappeared from the 1920s onwards, thus suggesting that either discriminatory practices gradually vanished and/or that they no longer translated into higher mortality rates due to enhanced living standards

En torno al comunal en España: una agenda de investigación llena de retos y promesas

En este documento de trabajo se delimitan los problemas a los que se enfrenta la investigación española sobre los recursos comunales en perspectiva histórica y se sugieren posibles vías de acción. Con este fin, los contenidos se han estructurado en torno a cuatro grandes temas: la tipología del comunal y su gestión, la cuantificación de los recursos colectivos, la funcionalidad del común y la economía política de estos recursos.This working paper outlines the challenges faced by scholars studying issues around Spanish common lands from a historical perspective. The text is structured around found main topics: the typology of the commons, the quantification of collective resources, the role of the communal regime and the political economy of these resources

Social and environmental filters to market incentives: common land persistence in 19th century Spain

The regional diversity of communal persistence in 19th century Spain has been well documented by historiography. Although the explanation of this divergence has been attributed to the social and environmental context, together with the prevailing market incentives that characterized the different rural societies of this period, there has been no clear assessment of the role played by each. Through a comparative study of the historical data at the provincial level, this paper analyzes the relative contribution of these elements to that divergence. The results diminish the significance of market signals and show how the social and environmental conditions of these communities interacted to limit, or promote, the dismantling of the common lands

Economic development, female wages and missing female births in Spain, 1900-1930

Focusing on Spain between 1900 and 1930, a period characterised by significant structural transformations and rapid economic growth, this article shows that the sex ratio at birth (SRB) was abnormally high, at least until the 1920s. Apart from questioning whether female under-registration and different mortality environments alone can explain the results reported here, our analysis of regional information indicates that SRBs were higher in provinces where the economic structure was dominated by agriculture and manufacturing (relative to the service sector). In addition, exploiting the annual variation in low-skilled wages at the province level makes it possible to distinguish between the roles played by under-registration and outright neglect: while higher wages could increase the opportunity cost of registering a female birth (and therefore result in higher SRBs), they could also reduce the pressure to neglect female babies (and therefore result in lower SRBs). We find evidence of both effects (income and opportunity cost) of wages on SRBs between 1914 and 1920 in Spain, a period in which WWI arguably subjected the Spanish economy to an exogenous demand shock. These two effects, however, imply very different discriminatory practices. In fact, on average, the income effect was larger than the effect arising from the opportunity cost, which supports the idea that female neglect around birth was more prevalent than previously assumed during the early twentieth century in Spain. As expected, the relationship between wages and the SRB vanished during the 1920s, along with the unbalanced SRB. These results stress that gender discrimination around birth does not necessarily disappear with economic growth unless this process is accompanied by expanded labour opportunities for women.Open Access funding provided by Universidad Pública de Navarra. Rebeca Echavarri also acknowledges financial support from the grant PID2020-115183RB-C21 & PID2021-127119NB-I00 funded by MCIN/AEI//10.13039/501100 and by “ERDF A way of making Europe”. Francisco Beltran Tapia acknowledges financial support from the Research Council of Norway (Project 301527)

Inequality and Growth in a Developing Economy: Evidence from Regional Data (Spain, 1860–1930)

This article measures inequality at the provincial level in Spain for different benchmark years between 1860 and 1930. It then empirically assesses the relationship between economic growth and inequality. The results confirm that, although growing incomes did not directly contribute to reducing inequality, at least during the early stages of modern economic growth, other processes associated with economic growth such as the rural exodus to urban and industrial centers, the demographic transition, and the spread of literacy, among others, notably improved the situation of the bottom part of the population