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Cliometrica (2015) 9:2748
DOI 10.1007/s11698-014-0107-9
ORIGINAL PAPER
Francisco J. Beltrn Tapia
Received: 22 June 2013 / Accepted: 6 February 2014 / Published online: 23 February 2014 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2014
Abstract Biological living standards stagnated or even declined during the transition to modern economic growth. Although income per capita was increasing, other indicators, such as mortality rates or heights, portrayed a completely different image. This paper adds to the standard of living debate by analysing the potential effect of the privatisation of common lands. Although highly controversial regarding its impact on the modernisation process itself, its contribution to human welfare has somewhat received much less attention. Focusing on the Spanish experience, this paper exploits geographical variation over time by collecting a panel data set at the provincial level on three different periods: 1860, 1900 and 1930. The empirical analysis shows that the persistence of these collective resources is related with higher life expectancy and heights, particularly during the second half of the nineteenth century. Biological human welfare also seems to have been negatively inuenced by the progressively decreasing role that local communities played on the management of these resources. The survival of common lands in some regions provided peasants with mechanisms different from the market, thus making the transition to a market economy more socially sustainable.
Keywords Common lands Privatisation Biological living standards Spain
JEL Classication I15 I30 N34 N44 N54 Q15
1 Introduction
The standard of living debate has revealed the deterioration in welfare suffered by many people in the transition from traditional to modern economies (Floud and
F. J. Beltrn Tapia (&)
Nufeld College, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK e-mail: [email protected]
Commons and the standard of living debate in Spain, 18601930
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Steckel 1997; Komlos 1998; Easterlin 1999). Although income per capita was increasing, other indicators, such as mortality rates, life expectancy or heights, puzzlingly portrayed an image of stagnating or deteriorating well-being in the early phases of modern economic growth, especially among the lower classes of the population. The development process, reected in rapid industrialisation and urbanisation, generated negative externalities, which, in an era where government intervention was practically nonexistent, were overcome only slowly due to an increasing awareness on the role of the public sector...