Measuring Up: A History of Living Standards in Mexico, 1850-1950 (Social Science History) - Hardcover

López-Alonso, Moramay

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0804773165 ISBN 13: 9780804773164

Verlag: STANFORD UNIV PR, 2012

Inhaltsangabe

Measuring Up traces the high levels of poverty and inequality that Mexico faced in the mid-twentieth century. Using newly developed multidisciplinary techniques, the book provides a perspective on living standards in Mexico prior to the first measurement of income distribution in 1957. By offering an account of material living conditions and their repercussions on biological standards of living between 1850 and 1950, it sheds new light on the life of the marginalized during this period.

Measuring Up shows that new methodologies allow us to examine the history of individuals who were not integrated into the formal economy. Using anthropometric history techniques, the book assesses how a large portion of the population was affected by piecemeal policies and flaws in the process of economic modernization and growth. It contributes to our understanding of the origins of poverty and inequality, and conveys a much-needed, long-term perspective on the living conditions of the Mexican working classes.

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Über die Autorinnen und Autoren

Moramay López-Alonso is Assistant Professor of History at Rice University.

Moramay López-Alonso is Assistant Professor of History at Rice University.

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MEASURING UP

A History of Living Standards in Mexico, 1850–1950By MORAMAY LÔPEZ-ALONSO

STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

Copyright © 2012 Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8047-7316-4

Contents

List of Illustrations..............................................................................................................ixAcknowledgments....................................................................................................................xiiiList of Acronyms...................................................................................................................xviiIntroduction.......................................................................................................................1Section 1. Institutions and Living Standards.......................................................................................15Chapter 1. The Ideas Behind the Making of Welfare Institutions.....................................................................19Chapter 2. Welfare as Charity......................................................................................................31Chapter 3. Welfare as Public Policy................................................................................................43Section 2. Anthropometric Evidence.................................................................................................59Chapter 1. The Measure of Well-Being and Growth: Why and How Do We Use Heights to Understand Living Standards?.....................61Chapter 2. The Tall or Short of It: Tracking Heights and Living Standards..........................................................101Section 3. The Synergies Between Health and Nutrition..............................................................................131Chapter 1. Health and Nutrition: The History.......................................................................................137Chapter 2. Health and Nutrition: The Data Analysis.................................................................................179Overview and Final Conclusions.....................................................................................................207Appendix...........................................................................................................................217Notes..............................................................................................................................221Bibliography.......................................................................................................................253Index..............................................................................................................................267

Chapter One

The Ideas Behind the Making of Welfare Institutions

The Catholic Church of the nineteenth century viewed poverty as inherent to human society and hence ineradicable. The biblical foundation of these assertions, rooted in the readings of Matthew 26:8—11, among other texts, gave the basis for accepting poverty in the Western world as well as for proclaiming the Catholic Church the mother of the poor and hence the institution responsible for assisting them. In general terms, this is how in the history of the Western world the terms Catholic Church, poverty, and charity became closely intertwined. In this chapter I will discuss the ideas that shaped concepts and policies on welfare, poverty, and charity as they evolved in the Western world and as they were adopted in Mexico.

Prior to the mid-nineteenth century it was, in fact, basically impossible to eliminate poverty from societies. This was because all societies during the preindustrial era—and even during the first phases of the Industrial Revolution—were still economies whose growth was bounded by physical restrictions inherent to traditional modes of production, especially in agriculture. Agriculture required that the greatest portion of laboring people made use of extant production techniques; the constant threat of potentially adverse climatic conditions such as droughts or frosts made societies vulnerable to crop failures, and these failures forced people into poverty.

Three classical economists of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries described and explained these limitations: Adam Smith, David Ricardo, and Thomas Malthus. Although Smith and Ricardo had a great optimism about the benefits of industrialization, they recognized the limits imposed on economic growth by agricultural production. In his Wealth of Nations (1776), Adam Smith declares his enthusiasm for the effectiveness of the division of labor. In his famous parable of the production of nails, he explains the gains to be made from this innovation in the organization of production. Still, he recognizes that the division of labor as introduced in industrial production could not be applied in agriculture. In the early nineteenth century, David Ricardo, in his On the Principles of Political Economy and Taxation, presents the different angles of diminishing marginal returns (DMRs), which offers an additional explanation of the limits of agriculture production to the one posed by Smith. Ricardo assumes a fixed method of agricultural production, such that the condition of the land becomes the key variable in value. Ricardo explains that DMRs were among the causes that inhibited the further growth of economies at the time, and that DMRs also held true not only for food production, but for all sectors of the economy. He reasons that nearly all branches of production were based mainly on animal and vegetable raw materials that were a part of agriculture. Thomas Malthus's argument of human demographic behavior (ca. 1803) was another compelling explanation, contending that traditional societies would always have poor people. In times of plenty, better nutrition would decrease mortality and, lustful as human beings were, they would raise fertility rates and eventually the additional labor supply would force wages back to the minimum subsistence level.

Decades later, the ideas of these three classical economists were put into question by technological innovations in agricultural production that would free economies from such barriers. The introduction of these innovations increased the production of agricultural goods while it required fewer people working in the fields. Fewer people working in the fields meant more people available to work in other sectors of the economy, such as the nascent industries. These changes resulted in a steady rise in real incomes for the economy in general. More wealth was created. Changes in the productivity of the economy resulted from innovations in agricultural technology and industrialization as much as from research and innovations in the fields of physics, chemistry, and biology that made it possible to develop technologies that increased the supply of energy available for production. In addition, despite the growing prosperity in the economy, fertility tended to decline in most Western societies. Alas, Malthus did not live long enough to see that the evolution of populations in the industrializing world did not match his argument on human demographic behavior.

Karl Marx was one of the contemporary observers of the mid-nineteenth century who realized that the new modes of production created more wealth, and he understood the depth of transformation that the rise of capitalism would bring to Western economies. Marx feared that, in the new capitalist economy,...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: STANFORD UNIV PR
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2012
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0804773165
• ISBN 13: 9780804773164
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 304
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: preigu; mail@preigu.de; ; Lengericher Landstr. 19; Osnabrück; 49078; Deutschland