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José Joaquín García Gómez University of Alicante jjgarcia@ua.es

The Standard of Living of the workers in Alcoy (1836-1913): Real wages , nutrition and sanitary reform. José Joaquín García Gómez University of Alicante jjgarcia@ua.es. Index. Introduction The Consumer Price Index of Alcoy (1836-1913)

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José Joaquín García Gómez University of Alicante jjgarcia@ua.es

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  1. The Standard of Living of theworkers in Alcoy (1836-1913):Real wages, nutrition and sanitaryreform José Joaquín García Gómez University of Alicante jjgarcia@ua.es

  2. Index • Introduction • The Consumer Price Index of Alcoy (1836-1913) • Real wages during the Industrialization: The case of Alcoy • Diet and nutritional status of the workers in Alcoy • Conclusions: the importance of public intervention

  3. Introduction • Alcoy, pioneercity of the Industrial Revolution in Spain • High factory density • Accelerated demographic growth and anarchicurbanization: market failures and negative external effects • Slight improvement of the income per capita

  4. Introduction • Negative medioambiental, sanitary,alimentary andworking conditions • Deterioration of non chrematistic welfare elements was not balanced by the monetary elements: drop of the standard of living

  5. Introduction • Welfare only raised when recovering its non monetary elements: • Improvement of thenutritional status • Publicinterventiontomitigatethemarketfailures of theincipient industrial and capitalistsystem

  6. Introduction • Our goal is to analyse: • Consumption (through its proxy, real wages) • Nutrition (through diet and calories) • Its impact on mortality and height (indicators of the standard of living)

  7. CPI in Alcoy (1836-1913) • Prices of goods and services consumed by households, represented by a consumer basket. • 36.000 data references of local prices • Two sources: MERCURIAL and INSTITUTIONAL account books • Archives: Municipal, Provincial and National Statistical Office • Reduction to one annual price in each product, exchanging ancient monetary units to pesetas measures to metrical system

  8. CPI in Alcoy (1836-1913) • Consumption baskets: • Hospital´s account books (1837, 1852, 1871, 1918) • Social Reforms Commission Reports (1884) • Applying Laspeyres formula:

  9. 1913=100

  10. Real wages during the industrialization: the case of Alcoy • 12.300 data • Sources: • 1836-1879: records of ARFPA, the Hospital´s account books and the budget settlements of the City Hall, completed with the occasional available statistics and historical press • 1880-1914: Census Books and Labor Agreements

  11. Real wages during the industrialization: the case of Alcoy • Arithmetic mean of nominal wages in agricultural, industrial and buildingconstructionsectors • Deflation of the series using CPI • Result: lethargic and irregularevolution • Comparation and contrastwithmortality and height

  12. Diet and nutritional status of the workers in Alcoy • Real wages (overall consumption) don´t explain welfare evolution during the industrialization of Alcoy • We choose food consumption and nutrition: • 5 Budgets of food consumption • Sources: Monthly summaries of introductions in 1884, 1897 y 1912, and Hospital food expenditures in 1852, 1868 y 1928 • Conversion to Kilocalories(source: www.bedca.com) • Comparation with mortality and height: strengthen correlation

  13. Daily average grammes per capita and per day in Alcoy.

  14. Own elaboration from the explained data sources. Conversion to kcal. from Cussó (2005) and www.bedca.com

  15. Conclusions • Lack of correlation between real wages (overall consumption and mortality and height • Other factors affected negatively to welfare (enviroment, nutrition, work conditions, sanitary state…) • These were the negative external effects of industrialization and urbanization • Nutrition is highly correlationed with mortality and height: the standard of living only rose when food did

  16. Conclusions • Publicexpenditurein sanitaryreformmitigatedthenegativeexternaleffects of industrialization • Data compiledfrom municipal accountbooks • Strong correlation between public expenditure per capita in the sanitary reform and mortalityand height • Until the last decades of 19th higher real income and food consumption did not make up for a better life conditions • Between the late 19th century and 1913, when healthcare reform started up, we could already feel optimistic

  17. Conclusions

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