Micro-Level Insights on the Evolution of Living Standards and Inequality: Adult Height and Socioeconomic Status in Spain (1940-2017)

Begoña Candela-Martínez, University of Murcia
Antonio D. Cámara, University of Jaen
Diana López-Falcón , Munich Center for the Economics of Aging
José M. Martínez-Carrión , University of Murcia

The main objective is the assessment of the influence of the socioeconomic status on the living standards of the Spanish population during the process of modernization and convergence with other Western European affluent societies. Such process mainly encompassed the second half of the past century and it was paralleled by intense and rapid changes in key aspects of human welfare. Along this process, both economic and biosocial indicators (i.e. per capita GDP, life expectancy, others.), inform on substantial progress in the living conditions of the Spanish population as a whole but less is known about the trajectory of living standards followed by social class. Two specific research questions drive our analyses in this work. The first one is whether the rapid increase of cohorts’ height in Spain over the second half of the twentieth century that has been previously documented was associated to any convergence in living conditions among socioeconomic groups.The second one copes with the influence of micro-level factors in diverse socioeconomic macro-level contexts and whether such influence differs between men and women. In other words, we aim at finding out whether socioeconomic status increased or diminished its ability to explain differences in the dimensions of human well-being that are captured by adult height.

No extended abstract or paper available

 Presented in Session 255. Heights and health in 19th and 20th centuries