Francisco Medina and Salvador Calatayud, professors at the University of Valencia, and José Miguel Martínez, professor at the University of Murcia, are co-editors of a book on nutritional inequality in Spain that has just been published by Routledge, one of the most prestigious scientific publishers in the world.
In the book,Inequality and Nutritional Transition in Economic History. Spain in the 19th-21st Centuries, In addition to the three economics professors, a large team of multidisciplinary specialists participate, focusing their work on the differences in access to nutrition in Spain from the 19th to the 21st century and the associated inequalities.
Factors of inequality
Food consumption is one of the key characteristics that determine the living standards of a society and, in addition, access to good or bad nutrition establishes the biological factors of each generation. In Spain, in the last three centuries, different socioeconomic variations have caused citizens to have limited access to food or, on the contrary, to enjoy an abundant diet. The results of eating more or less are reflected, for example, in the average height and body mass of different generations.
The industrial revolution in the 19th century in which there was an exodus from the countryside to the city, the Civil War and its subsequent post-war period in the 20th century and the current economic crises are some of the historical events that have occurred in Spain that, in one way or another, have determined access to food consumption and nutrition in society. But it is not only historical events that give rise to nutritional inequalities; this book also analyzes nutritional inequalities associated with generational, gender or geographic reasons.
Data collection
In this publication we have tried to alleviate the problem of measuring dietary inequalities in the past, since there are currently few sources available. For this reason, the research group has been based, on the one hand, on the study of primary sources and, on the other hand, on the effects that these changes in diet have caused. Thanks to this combination, we have obtained a more precise study of great interest for historians of different disciplines, such as economics, science, medicine, anthropology, among others.
Access to the publication here.
