The urban-rural height gap in late nineteenth-century Catalonia

Abstract

This paper aims to explore whether and to what extent there was a gap in biological living standards between rural and urban areas. It focuses on the north-eastern Iberian region of Catalonia by making use of a new and large dataset (more than 16,000 observations) based on military records for the cohort of males born in the year 1890 and enlisted in the year 1911. By combining individual heights with information at municipal level, we conclude that the 1890 cohort of conscripts living in villages and towns up to 5,000 inhabitant s were shorter than those that resided in towns and cities with more than 20,000 people. We also show that the relationship between height and population size may vary depending on the geographical area under study. This might suggest the existence of a qualified rural height penalty in late nineteenth-century Catalonia.