Poverty and stature in rural inland Spain during the nutritional transition

This article analyses nutritional inequalities and stunting in the rural interior of Spain based on a case study carried out in the region of Castile-La Mancha. By examining the height of military draftees, the evolution of growth patterns is revealed, and the gap between the stature of the urban and rural populations is analysed. The results indicate that stunted growth and undernourishment were pervasive during the two initial decades of the twentieth century; the situation improved slightly in the 1920s and the first half of the 1930s; and in the 1940s and 1950s the conditions again deteriorated considerably. Stunted growth was significant especially in rural areas, which suffered particularly during the Franco regime. Height increased considerably in the 1960s and 1970s and, although this improvement also reached the rural areas, the gap between the countryside and the urban areas did not disappear until the early 1980s. The data suggest that key factors in the evolution of physical growth were a poor and limited diet, the economic policies implemented by the Regime and the institutional framework related to social assistance. Finally, the results also suggest the need to extend the study beyond children to examine the circumstances of adolescents, along with the need to investigate social inequality among different professional groups during the nutritional transition.