Alfabetización, bienestar biológico y desigualdad: la Comunidad Valenciana, 1850-1970

This article examines the relationships between height and education in the process of literacy and modernization in Spain. Using longitudinal data from recruitment sources of the Community of Valencia, we report on features of biological well-being and inequality between literate and illiterate groups. Results show that stature increased together with literacy rates improvements in the long term. Circa 1860, the literate mean height was 4 cm higher than the illiterate one; however, such inequality decreased between 1880 and 1915 because of advances in illiterate populations and also due to the fact that popular classes with poor nutritional status had access to the literacy process. Thus, height differences between literate and illiterate conscripts became by 1 cm in the early twentieth. The cohorts 1915-1925 declined in both groups, though more significantly in illiterate conscripts that was 30 per cent of the whole, increasing inequality. At the end, the majority of the population was literate but the differences between literacy and illiteracy conscripts had become wider, achieving differences by 4 cm. This article concludes that biological well-being penalty occurred in the poorest groups and inequality increased in conscripts born between 1936-48, which reveals welfare policy deficiency after the Civil War.