1 "a history of poverty and inequality in mexico, 1840-1940: an
TRANSCRIPT
1
"A History of Poverty and Inequality in Mexico, 1840-1940: An Anthropometric Approach."
Presented at Session 76 of the International Economic History Association Meeting
Helsinki Finland August 2006
Moramay López-Alonso Rice University
[email protected] [email protected]
PLEASE DO NOT CITE WITHOUT THE AUTHORS PERMISSION
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"A History of Poverty and Inequality in Mexico, 1850-1950: An Anthropometric Approach."
MORAMAY LÓPEZ-ALONSO An examination of height data of the Mexican rural militia (rurales) and of passport
holders provides a picture of the biological living standards of the Mexican population
for the period 1840 to 1940 year period. Height differentials between rurales and
passport holders throughout this period sheds light on the impact of industrialization
and modernization of the economy on the living standards of the population as well as
on the degree of inequality that prevailed Mexican society.
In the past 15 years a vast literature has emerged on the economic history of Mexico to
understand its performance during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The novelty
of this research is that it has been undertaken through the systematic analysis of data
and with the use economic theory tools. The macroeconomic portion of this literature
has made a thorough revision of the emergence of the industry, export sector, banking,
mining and transportation, however little attention has been given to the effects of the
macro trends on the living standards of the population. This paper examines the
evolution of living standards of Mexicans born during the period 1840 to 1940.
This study has a twofold purpose: first, it aims to contribute with the analysis of
the evolution living standards to the growing body of literature on the Mexican
economic history and second, it seeks to contribute to the field of anthropometric
research presenting the study of a developing nation: Mexico. The argument advanced
in this study is that the evolution of living standards occurred differently across social
classes. The lower strata of the population has shown a decline in height during the
second half of the nineteenth century and then stagnated for the first half of the
3
twentieth century while the upper classes showed an increase. The case of the upper
classes is consistent with the evolution of the economy and the investments in public
works. The contrast with the trends of popular classes manifests the high degree of
inequality in Mexican society.
The period 1840-1940 in an interesting period of study in the history of Mexico
because it was a time period in which the nation underwent profound social, political
and economic transformations. The second half of the nineteenth century witnessed the
first wave of industrialization, transportation systems developed substantially thus
favoring the export-led growth that took place during the end of the nineteenth century.
Moreover, there were demographic changes during the first decades of the twentieth
century, such as the rapid rise in life expectancy. Demographic changes were to a good
extent the result of substantial investments to improve public sanitation during the
Porfiriato. After the Revolution, there was an accelerated growth of urban centers after
the Revolution. These social and economic changes took place in a changing political
environment.
The mid-nineteenth century was a time of political instability with a government
constantly in financial distress due to a decline of fiscal revenues and numerous threats
of foreign invasion. It was not up until the dictatorship of Porfirio Díaz that slowly but
surely the nation attained peace, and with it some industrialization, export led growth
and economic growth. Yet the Pax Porfiriana was achieved through a strategy that was
not sustainable in the long run, and consequently ended with the outbreak of the 1910
revolution. The resulting political instability affected the Mexican Republic up until the
end of the 1920s decade. The 1930s and 1940s were the period when Mexico began to
undertake the structural changes and receive the necessary investments that made the
Mexican Miracle of sustained economic growth possible in the three decades that
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followed. The benefits of the Mexican Miracle unfortunately excluded the great
majority of the population.
The following study is organized in four sections. The first section presents a
brief overview of the history of Mexico highlighting the traditional hypothesis on living
standards and a brief discussion of the state of knowledge on living standards. The
second section explained the benefits of working with anthropometric measurements to
study the evolution of living standards in Mexico. The third section presents the sources
and their statistical description, and for the case of the rurales, it presents the
adjustments to correct for shortfalls since it is a military sample.1 The third section
presents the regression analysis and the fourth section concludes.
I. Living standards in the historical context
Although it is commonly agreed that understanding the evolution of living
standards of the Mexican population is key to understanding why and how poverty and
inequality have prevailed in the country throughout its history as an independent nation
our knowledge on the subject is limited and sketchy. This stark reality is surprising in
light of the fact that the 1910 Revolution and the periods of sustained economic growth
could have contributed to alleviate these problems. The Revolution was supposed to
make the society less uneven and economic growth increased the wealth of the nation
and its inhabitants. However, current inequality in living standards shows that the
benefits of economic growth did not reach the whole population.
Most of the scholarship on the first fifty years covered by this study has been
done by social and economic historians of Mexico. Most of these studies are based on
anecdotal evidence or on studies that do a systematic analysis of data but only cover a
1 To correct the shortfalls that we normally find in military simples that had a minimum height requirement, especially when this requirement was not enforced uniformly over time.
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limited region of the country and a specific time period or a specific sector, thus these
results cannot be used to make generalizations on the Mexican population as whole nor
can we make use of them to assess the patterns of inequality in the long run.2 From
traditional historiography and recent studies based on anecdotal evidence we learn that
in nineteenth century Mexico the needs of the poor were the competence of charity
institutions, many which had been taken over from the Catholic Church. These
institutions were both private and public and were located in cities, thus help went
almost entirely to the urban poor, and the resources available were rather limited. The
help that the government was able to provide was scarce since there this was a period of
constant war and economic stagnation. 3 The Porfirio Díaz administration (1876-1910)
had a somehow different way of dealing with the issue of poverty; the difference came
in the way of federalizing welfare. The institutionalization of welfare was inaugurated
with the creation of the Junta de Beneficencia Pública under Secretaría de
Gobernación.4 The effectiveness of this government effort to alleviate the needs of the
poor was reduced to small portion of the population in need, namely the urban poor who
affected the image of modernity of the nation.5 The primary concerns of such
intellectuals, also known as the Científicos, was giving a good image of the nation in the
international arena to motivate foreign investors to bring their money to Mexico and to
bring western civilization into the country.6 Towards the end of the dictatorship some
intellectuals were able recognized that the benefits of material progress generated by
economic prosperity of the industrialization process and did not reach the great majority
2 Gómez Galvarriato and Mussachio, Niveles de precios (1998); Gómez-Galvarriato (1998) 3 “Tras la Independencia, como es sabido, la economía se estancó prácticamente hasta la restauración de la República en 1867” Coatsworth, John H. Los Orígenes del Atraso, (Mexico,1990) pp 22-32. 4 Blum, Ann “Conspicuous Benevolence” 5 Arrom, “Containing the Poor, The Mexico City Poor House” 6 See Tenorio-Trillo chapter 9
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of the population.7 The official history points it out as the main cause for the outbreak of
the 1910 Revolution.8 The Post-Revolution is portrayed by traditional historiography as
a period filled with strong efforts to alleviate poverty and, the success of these efforts is
highlighted.9 From this brief overview we can state that, since the end of the nineteenth
century, poverty was recognized as a major social problem and, there was a general
consensus that it was the government’s duty to find the way to eliminate it. The
ideological and political motivations to fight poverty evolved during the period of study,
just as the amount of resources that the government devoted to this issue. The purpose
of this study is to assess how effective these initiatives and investments were.
The revisionist historiography on nineteenth and twentieth century Mexico of
the past two decades has produced a new body of literature that goes beyond the use of
anecdotal evidence. The study of living standards is not the exception. Some of the
findings of studies based on a systematic analysis of data shed light on the evolution of
indicators that can help us understand what happened to the quality of life of the
population during the mid-nineteenth century, the Porfirio Díaz administration and the
first decades of the twentieth century. For instance, Richard Salvucci’s study on the
economic depression of the nineteenth century argues that although there was economic
stagnation during the mid-nineteenth century at the macro level, agricultural production
increased with respect to the 1810s.10 This suggests that even though trade and silver
production decreased during this time period, more food was produced. John
Coatsworth’s work on food production during the Díaz’ administration shows that the
production of basic staples increased at the same rate of population growth.11 This study
does not say anything on the distribution of food produced, but again, it does not
7 Andres Molina Enriquez, Los Grandes Problemas Nacionales, 1902 8 Tannenbaum, (1928), Silva-Herzog, (1945), Gónzalez, (1988), Katz, (1981), Gilly, (1994), 9 Knight, Alan, The Mexican Revolution Vol. 2, Counter Revolution and reconstruction, (1986) 10 Salvucci, 1997; Salvucci 2005. 11 Coatsworth, Los Orígenes del Atraso (1990)
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suggest that there were food shortages due to adverse climatic conditions. Other studies,
like Gómez-Galvarriato’s work on the living standards of textile workers in Veracruz,
focuses on the evolution of prices in Mexico City and wages of industrial workers
during the Porfiriato and the first years of the Revolution. Her research shows that,
although there was a decline in real wages, this took place only towards the end of the
Porfiriato, and that this decline was of 18%.12 Her findings contradict the common view
of traditional historiography on the causes of the 1910 Revolution that asserted that the
revolt started because the working classes were living under miserable conditions.
However, when examining Gómez-Galvarriato’s results based on solid evidence, we
should keep in mind two factors before making any generalization about the Mexican
working class: first, industrial workers were a small proportion of the working class at
the time thus their living conditions cannot be generalized for the population as a whole;
and second, the majority of the population lived in the countryside and operated outside
of the monetized economy. Hence there is a limit in the scope of these findings when
assessing the evolution of living standards of the Mexican population in general.
Current inequality levels question the efficacy of such welfare policies as well as
the reliability of the assertions made in most of the historiography of that time period.
The current reality contradicts the rhetoric and discourses that politicians have been
using for all the post-Revolutionary period. Their standard speech asserts that one of the
achievements of the 1910 Revolution is the improvement of living standards, attained
by all government’s efforts to alleviate poverty and eliminate inequality. Then they
proceeded to substantiate their assertions arguing that literacy and life expectancy rose
and peasants were receiving land grants. However, if we are to make an assessment by
comparing the evolution of those same variables (literacy, life expectancy and land
12 Gómez-Galvarriato “The Evolution of Prices and Wages from the Porfiriato to the Revolution”(1998)
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tenure) in other countries of Latin America we will be inclined to think that a
Revolution was not necessary to reduce illiteracy, infant mortality.13 In addition,
demographic statistics in the case of other countries show that the improvement in such
variables began to reflect an improvement one or two decades after the investment was
made.14 Interestingly, the major efforts to improve public sanitation were undertaken
during the Porfiriato, hence one could expect that the improvement in life expectancy in
the first decades of the Post- Revolution were a result of investments made prior to the
striking of the armed rebellion in 1910 and not a result of it. On the issue of land
redistribution it is hard to assess how it influenced the standards of living in the
countryside since this coincided with a period of massive rural exodus. While some
peasants were receiving land grants, many others were going to cities or to the United
States searching for better opportunities, thus reducing the demographic pressure in the
countryside.
Interestingly, for economists who study poverty and inequality it appears to be
that these social problems only started in 1950. The leading researchers on the subject
devote their studies to poverty after the 1980s crisis and those who are more “historical”
start in 1950.15 Why is this so? One can guess that perhaps somewhere in the youth or
childhood of these researchers they watched Buñuel’s “Los Olvidados” and therefore
decided that poverty and inequality started the year this classic was filmed. We could
also guess that because the quality of data available prior to that period is not reliable to
undertake a serious study, and building the necessary series would require too big an
effort and infinite patience that it is better to concentrate in the present or the very recent
past. Let us discard the hypothesis that to Mexican development economists or
researchers on Mexican economic development the long term does not matter, since a 13 See Salvatore 2004ª and Salvatore 2004b 14 Livi-Bacci (2000) chapters 6 & 7, Fogel, (2004) Chapter 1 & 2 15 For studies on poverty see Selby, Murphy and Lorenzen, 1990, Székely 1998, Kelly 1999.
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good part of them were trained in the US or England so there is no way they could not
have gone through graduate school without being acquainted with the research of Simon
Kuznets, Moses Abramovitz or Angus Maddison. In the end it appears to be a lack of
dialogue between policy makers/development economists and economic historians.
It is reasonable to accept as valid the findings of the new historiography that
assert that the 1910 Revolution was a political but a not social movement and that
economic activity continued to work all throughout the period of political instability. It
is also reasonable to bring to the attention of development economists the fact that the
past matters to understand the present, still we are left with a puzzle. Why inequality has
persisted in Mexico? There are countries that were once unequal, did not have a civil
war yet they reduced inequality gradually as was the case of England and other western
European countries during the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries. Mexico had many
ingredients to improve the quality of life of its population in the twentieth century yet it
failed to do so.
Politicians may argue that things improved with respect to the past
administration, historiography may argue that things improved or did not improve
according to when the scholarship was produced. Nonetheless we do not know what
actually happened based on a systematic analysis of evidence that covers the whole
population during a long term period. Granted that we will not argue that the 1910
revolution made a difference in terms of inequality, the question that arises is why
economic growth and the investment in public works did not do more to decrease
inequality over time. It is the purpose of this study to shed light on this issue borrowing
the tools of anthropometric history.
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II. Measuring living standards with anthropometric data: why it is the best
alternative for Mexico.
There is a consensus view in the living standards literature that there are many
ways to conceptualize them. The most common methods that use material indicators are
GDP per capita¸ real wages and price, and life expectancy; there is also adult stature.
There are five basic arguments that support the notion that height-by-age data are a
useful method to measure living standards. First, height data measures results instead of
inputs, as would be the case of income per capita. Second, height data are suitable to
measure living standards of different societies: very often the definition of poverty is
full of implicit cultural assumptions that explain only the industrialized nations. Third,
height data leave the possibility open to study societies with different patterns of
development. Fourth, height data capture differences in income inequality. And fifth,
heights are observable in all societies. 16
The use of traditional indicators to measure living standards in the Mexican case
in the period we are covering present many difficulties. Let us briefly explain them.
GDP per capita has two basic problems: it is incomplete for the period of study and it is
not clear how the series were constructed. For the nineteenth century the GDP per
capita is only available for few years. The data to construct the series are drawn from
different primary and secondary sources without explaining how the data were
gathered.17 The twentieth century data comes from the INEGI statistics.18 However,
INEGI does not provide the methods employed to construct the series. Without the
methods and/or sources it is impossible to replicate the results. In addition GDP per
16 Steckel, “Stature and the Standard of Living” (1995) 17 See Coatsworth Orígenes del atraso, chapters 4 & 5 (1990) 18 INEGI (Instiuto Nacional de Estadística, Goegrafía, e Informática) is the government agency that produces all statistical data in Mexico.
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capita could not say much about the evolution of living standards of Mexicans given
that Mexico has observed endemic inequality throughout its history.
Wage series for workers also have its downsides. There are some samples for
some scattered years in some specific regions for some specific sectors like mining and
the textile industry, but these are not representative of the Mexican population as a
whole.19 There are some statistical series starting in 1895 but the absence of methods
and sources utilized makes it impossible to replicate results.20 For the price of consumer
goods we find a similar problem to that of wages. There is not detailed enough data on
what the prices of consumer goods were across Mexico. In most cases the data available
is in most cases unreliable for the same reason data on wages are, results cannot be
replicated.21 Moreover, there is no information on the consumption patterns of the
population either. Not knowing the consumption patterns of a population does not allow
us to make inferences on the living standards of the population under study.
One last argument against wages, prices, and income as measures of living
standards for the case of Mexico until the twentieth century is that most people operated
outside of the monetized economy. The majority of the population lived in rural areas
and lived on subsistence agriculture. Barter was very common. Cash money was only
used for special transactions thus it was not part of everyday life. Financial services
were not available to the majority of the population. Common people made investments
and savings through non-monetary means such as raising animals to sell or barter later.
Height data is not a perfect measure of well being either. However, in the
absence of reliable data on income, wages and prices this is the best alternative there is,
hence in studying the evolution of income distribution and the history of living
19 See Gómez-Galvarriato “Evolution of prices” and Bortz, Salarios Industriales 20 El Colegio de México, Estadísticas Históricas del Porfiriato, Fuerza de Trabajo y actividad económica por sectores. México s.f. 21 The exception to these kinds of works is Gómez-Galvarriato & Mussachio’s work on price series in Mexico City for the period 1886-1929.
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standards in Mexico, this is best applicable method. We will use adult heights as a
proxy of living standards, knowing that adult height is a reliable indicator of net
nutrition during growing years. For example, the average height of the cohort born in
1880 will illustrate how in the quality of health and nutrition was during the first two
decades of life of such cohort, namely from 1880 to 1900.
III Sources and regression analysis
Data description
The primary sources used in this study are the passport records from the
Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Secretaría de Relaciones Exteriores, SRE) and military
records from the rural militia of the National Archive (Archivo General de la Nación
AGN). The passport records are available on microfilm in the Archivo de Pasaportes.22
The series recorded all passports issued between 1910 and 1942 and have 22,500
observations, of which 16,612 include the information necessary to do this study.23 This
information includes physical stature of men and women 18 years and older, data and
place of birth as well as occupation.24 Literacy is universal in this sample. With this
information we can infer the region of origin, the year of birth and their social class of
passport holders. The portion of people who requested passports who were not born in
Mexico are excluded from the sample since presumably their growing years were not
spent in the Mexican Republic, thus they would not be indicative of living conditions in
Mexico.
Tables 1 to 3 show the basic features of this sample. The passport holders in the
sample were born between 1860 and 1920, most of the observations are concentrated in
22 The archive that holds passports at the SRE is part of the Dirección General de Pasaportes and it is not a public repository. It holds microfilmed records of all passports issued since 1910, as of November 2002 this archive is closed to the public under the new transparency law that protects the privacy of Mexican citizens. Since this date archives can only be consulted under if having a judicial order. 23 The nearly 6,000 observations we could not use in the sample pertain to foreigners, passport holders younger than age 18 and older than 50 as well as files missing information on height. 24 Adult height is not reached until age 23 (Tanner 1981)
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the turn of the century decades (table 1). The passport holders were mainly from the
Center and Center-North of the country (Bajío) (table 2). Figure 1 shows the regional
classification of the Mexican Republic of this study. The North has the lowest densities
of population all throughout the period of study. The largest concentration of
Indigenous peoples is found in the South.
Figure 1. Four regions of Mexico
People who requested passports were people who had the means to travel abroad
for business, study or leisure. I consider these records an appropriate source to gather
data on heights for the better strata of the population. Although there were a significant
number of people from the lower middle classes who requested passports as it shows in
table 3, in this study we will concentrate on the examination of better off portion of the
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population.25 Having a significant number of observations of the people from the
different social backgrounds makes it feasible to draw a reliable comparison across
social classes.26. We should point out, however, that this sample is upwardly biased
because the poorest portion of the working classes had no means to travel abroad at
least not on a legal basis, thus they are not captured in this sample. The portion of
unskilled workers in the sample was composed mainly by men who were going to the
US to work on the “bracero” program, and by women who were going as nannies or
servants of large elite families traveling abroad. Women represent approximately a third
of the passport sample. The regional distribution is similar to that of men. There were
however some additional difficulties when doing the classification by occupation.
During this time period s significant number of women did not have a remunerated job
and had no schooling, making it hard to infer their social class from their profession. In
an attempt to classify social class of women listed as having no profession I used the
profession of the father, as stated in the birth certificate.27
Table 1. Passports Distribution of the Sample by decade of birth Decade D1860 D1870 D1880 D1890 D1900 D1910 D1920 Total Total 127 501 1463 3087 5677 5068 674 16597 Males 76 286 963 2231 4024 3353 457 11390 Females 51 215 500 856 1653 1715 217 5207 Source: Ministry of Foreign Affairs Archives. It includes people between ages 18 to 50.
25 In table ·3 we see that nearly half of the people in the simple were skilled manual workers which represent the better off portion of the working class, while the other half of the observation are only of white collar and elite people that represent the upper strata of the population. 26 Socio-occupational categories. Unskilled workers: farm workers, farmers, peasants, laborer, industrial worker, miner, construction workers. Skilled manual workers: shoemaker, saddler, weaver, taylor, machine operator, blacksmith, carpenter, tanner, merchant, baker, chauffeur. Skilled white collar: musician, typist, school teacher, book keeper, federal employee. Elite: landowner, physician, lawyer, engineer. Students were assigned the social class according to what their parents’ occupation was. I am aware that there could be significant wage differentials among jornaleros, peasants and miners depending on the region they worked, however there is no way to infer such differential with the information provided in the records. 27 Circa 1935 birth certificates stopped being microfilmed in a systematic way. It became harder to make this classification. In the case of women who were married and requested their passport at the same time their husbands did. I assumed they belonged to the same social class but this information was not always available thus this classification was harder to make in the latter part of the study.
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Table 2. Passports Distribution of Sample by Region of Birth Region North Bajío Center South TOTAL Total 2059 3378 9797 1363 16597 Males 1398 2309 6694 989 11390 Females 661 1069 3103 374 5207 Source: Ministry of Foreign Affairs Archives. It includes people between ages 18 to 50. Table 3. Passport sample. Distribution by occupation CLASS Unskilled Skilled
manual White collar Elite TOTAL
Total 1116 7510 3976 3995 16597 Males 376 5290 2577 3147 11390 Females 740 2220 1399 848 5207 Source: Ministry of Foreign Affairs Archives. It includes people between ages 18 to 50.
The data for rural soldiers are drawn from the Legajos de Gobernación at the
1821-1910 Public Administration section at the AGN. The rurales militia was created
by President Juárez in the late 1850s to guarantee public security in a period defined by
economic stagnation, poor law and order enforcement, the spread of banditry and
smuggling, and where contending political factions staged coups.28 This militia was
supposed to be entirely loyal to the president. When Porfirio Díaz became president he
reinforced this militia to have it as a counterbalance to the Federal Army and thus
reinforce his control over any potential opponent to his regime.
Recruits were volunteers. They were paid higher wages than federal soldiers
nonetheless they had to pay for their weapons, horses and uniforms. Therefore it is not
possible to assert that they were better off than their federal counterparts. Some
scholarly research asserts that many of these volunteers were former bandits.29 Once
rurales grew tired of the job they deserted and could make some money from selling
their equipment. It is then not surprising to find that desertion rates were high in spite of
28 Between 1821 and 1857 there were 44 changes of government and three foreign invasions. 29 Paul Vanderwood’s, Disorder and Progress is the best example of such scholarship.
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the severe punishments for deserters.30 Tracking down deserters was so expensive that
superiors preferred to recruit new soldiers to replace those who left the service. This
explains the high number of recruitment records there is compared to the relatively
small size of the corps.31 Corruption was the rule in the management of this army and
discipline problems were constant and numerous. Reports mention constantly cases of
soldiers stealing weapons and other equipment to resell it. It seemed from the reports as
if these men were mercenaries who took the rural militia as a temporary job from which
they could extract rents while they found something better. Their effectiveness was
doubtful in keeping public security if we were to judge by the number and type of
complaints presented by the civil population. They often abused their authority in towns
where they were stationed. Sometimes they would ally with the local boss and then
become a threat to the population.
The sample covers all recruits between ages 23 and 50 that served in the rural
militia for whom there is a recorded numeric stature.32 The data set has 6820 soldiers.
Most of the rurales were born between the 1840s and the 1880s (table 4). The recruits
of this corps came mainly from the Center, and less so from the Bajío, very few of them
came from the North. Half of the recruits were rural dwellers while the rest were from
small towns and cities. More than half of the recruits were landless peasants or mine
workers, a third were artisans.33 The average age of recruitment was 30 years. Half of
them were illiterate (table 5).
30 “Captured deserters ended up with an army battalion in the hellholes of Veracruz and Yucatán but most who deserted were never captured or even pursued.” Ibid p. 109 31 “By 1880 he (the President) had expanded the force by 90 percent to 1,767 men” Ibid p. 70 32 In order to build this sample we revised all boxes that contained the recruitment files and muster rolls. There were recruitment files in approximately 60 percent of the boxes. 70 percent of the recruitment files corresponded to soldiers 23 years and older. Most of the recruits were born between 1860 and 1890. 33 Socio occupational classification is the same as the one for the passport holders.
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Table 4: Rurales sample. Distribution by decade of birth Decade of birth 1840s 1850s 1860s 1870s 1880s 1890s Total Total 345 1232 2097 1432 1194 520 6820 >159 cm 319 1169 1994 1358 1154 463 6458 >160 cm 313 1147 1965 1338 1137 453 6353 23 years and older
341 1159 1631 1022 888 7 5048
Note: AGN, Legajos de Gobernación. Soldiers 18 and older. Table 5. Descriptive features of the rurales sample Region % Class % Literacy %
North 3.32 Unskilled 47.48 Literate 59.18
Bajío 39.19 Skilled manual 49.41 Illiterate 40.82
Center 51.47 White collar 3.05
South 6.02 Elite 0.06
Source: AGN Legajos de Gobernación
For military samples it is always necessary to deal with truncation samples. In
the case of the rurales they followed similar recruitment practices as did the federal
army hence presumably there was a minimum height requirement (MHR) of 160 cm.
However, since these recruits were volunteers and loyalty was the main requirement to
join this militia, it is not surprising that quite often the rest of the recruitment
requirements were not met, and the recruitment criteria were enforced differently over
time. Looking at the histograms of recruitment by decade this becomes evident.
According to the histograms on recruitment over time it becomes evident that the
minimum height requirement was not observed with a uniform criterion throughout this
period. We observe that there are deviations from the normal distribution in these
histograms and that there was a shortfall below the MHR but such shortfall is not the
same over time, depicting the changes in admission criteria on height upon recruitment.
Regression analysis
The evolution of statures is assessed with OLS regression analysis. In both the
passport and rurales samples the specification controls for social class, region and
18
decades of birth. This way we can make an assessment on the differences in quality of
life across regions and across social classes. The exercise was also done including the
youth ranging ages 18 to 22 to verify that indeed adult height is not reached up until age
23 in this data sample, specifications 1a and 1b include the youth in the passport sample
and 3a and 3b in the rurales sample. Moreover, in the case of the rurales, to avoid
sample selection biases I ran the regression truncating the sample at the MHR (160 cm)
and at 159 cm to test for potential biases due to rounding off practices.
Histograms of rurales
HPRE1870
177.5
175.0
172.5
170.0
167.5
165.0
162.5
160.0
Rurales recruited in the 1870s
8
6
4
2
0
Std. Dev = 5.35
Mean = 169.0
N = 22.00
H1880S
185.0
180.0
175.0
170.0
165.0
160.0
155.0
150.0
145.0
140.0
135.0
130.0
Rurales recruited in the 1880s
500
400
300
200
100
0
Std. Dev = 6.19
Mean = 167.3
N = 1355.00
19
H1890S
190.0
185.0
180.0
175.0
170.0
165.0
160.0
155.0
150.0
145.0
140.0
135.0
130.0
125.0
120.0
115.0
110.0
105.0
100.0
Rurales recruited in the 1890s
800
600
400
200
0
Std. Dev = 6.84
Mean = 167.7
N = 2353.00
H1900S
187.5
185.0
182.5
180.0
177.5
175.0
172.5
170.0
167.5
165.0
162.5
160.0
157.5
155.0
152.5
150.0
Rurales recruited in the 1900s
140
120
100
80
60
40
20
0
Std. Dev = 6.05
Mean = 167.1
N = 589.00
H1910S
190.0
185.0
180.0
175.0
170.0
165.0
160.0
155.0
150.0
145.0
140.0
135.0
130.0
125.0
120.0
115.0
110.0
105.0
Rurales recruited in the 1910s
700
600
500
400
300
200
100
0
Std. Dev = 6.82
Mean = 165.7
N = 2051.00
Table 6 shows the results of the OLS regression for the passport sample. The
categories of reference for both males and females are unskilled workers from the South
20
born in the 1860s. At first glance it appears that the population in general is getting
taller over time. Regressions 1a and 1b also test the change in average height when the
samples included people younger than age 23. This test was run to observe trends in the
last growing years, nonetheless the coefficients in these samples are not very
conclusive.34 This could be explained by younger generations born in the first decades
of the twentieth century and growing up at a time when public health initiatives were
implemented, thus their height is a reflection of having a better quality of health and
nutrition.
Table 6. Regression model for passport holders Independent Males Females Males Females Variables (1a) (1b) (2a) (2b) Unskilled Skilled manual workers
0.93** 1.22* 0.84** 1.01*
Skilled white-collar workers
1.21** 0.62** 1.06** 0.41*
Elite 2.45* 1.32* 2.33 1.04* North 2.82* 2.53* 2.59* 2.32* Bajío 2.11* 1.66* 2.04* 1.57 Center 1.37* 0.81** 1.18* 0.64 South Age 18 Age 19 -0.77 -0.51 Age 20 0.35 -0.67 Age 21 -0.15 -0.03 Age 22 0.47 0.10 Age 23 or + 0.54 -0.03 Born 1860 Born 1870 0.96 2.54** 0.95 2.59** Born 1880 1.15 3.97* 1.14 4.01* Born 1890 2.28** 4.85* 2.27* 4.89* Born 1900 2.57** 5.16* 2.58* 5.23* Born 1910 3.06* 5.13* 3.02* 5.15* Born 1920 3.29* 5.62* (dropped) 8.59 Constant 164.83* 153.50* 165.64* 153.76* R² 0.0235 0.0277 0.0229 0.0286 N 11390 5207 9693 4424 *significant at 1%; **significant at 5% Note: Method OLS, constants refer to adult unskilled workers, from the South of Mexico, born between 1860 and 1869
34 In historical populations it has been found that adult height is not attained until age 23.
21
Regarding the regional differences, results suggest people from the North and
the Bajío (Center North) are taller than their counterparts from the Center and South.
This differential is consistent with north-south differences in natural resource
endowments and population densities. In the North and Bajío (Center- North), densities
of population have been significantly lower since pre-hispanic times, the heart of
Mesoamerican civilizations were located in center and southern Mexico whereas the
Bajío and the North were the home of nomadic and semi-nomadic groups. Traditional
diet of the Bajío and North includes more meat since hunting was one of the prime
activities for the groups who lived in these areas in pre-hispanic times and later cattle
ranching developed in the colonial period, thus their traditional diet had higher protein
intake than the diet of their counterparts in the South for whom the corn, beans and
squash trinity was the base of the diet and these tendencies continued all throughout the
colonial period and into the national period.35 There are height differentials across social
classes too. The elite people are taller than the skilled white collar people and this are
taller than skilled manual workers categories. Unskilled workers are shorter in general.
Height seems to be a reflection of social class and income level. The results in the male
sample are more conclusive than those of women, and this may be explained by the
difficulties to classify social class of women for passports requested after 1935.
Table 7 shows the TOLS regression results of the rurales sample. These results
tell a different story than the previous sample. The categories of reference are adult,
skilled manual workers from the North of Mexico born in the 1840s. To test for
potential biases due to rounding off practices the exercise was done truncating at 159
cm and at 160 cm, a and b respectively. The exercise was done including youth (18-22)
35 There is a vast literature that addresses the issue of dietary habits among the peoples of Mexico from pre-hispanic times and into the present just to cite a few available in English there is Charles Gibson’s The Aztec’s under the Spanish, Alfred Crosby’s A Columbian Exchange, James Lockhart’s The Nahuas after the conquest, .
22
and excluding them (specifications 3 and 4 respectively). The test of the youth shows
that in this sample, height was attained at age 23. It makes sense to think that these
soldiers would be more representative of a historical sample, they were born and grew
up at a time when public health initiatives were not in full swing. The recruits from the
North and Bajío have a height advantage over those from the Center and South. Those
recruits whose former occupation is listed as “unskilled workers” are shorter than those
who had a trade. In this sense height here is also a reflection of social classes. The
difference in this sample with respect to the passport sample is that these soldiers were
getting shorter over time. This suggests that the standard of living of the popular classes
who were born and grew up in the second half of the nineteenth century was
deteriorating over time. Moreover, it substantiates the findings that assert that although
the mid-nineteenth century was a time of macro economic depression, agriculture
production did increase with respect to the early nineteenth century.
Because the sample is truncated to the left of the distribution, results will be
upwardly biased. When drawing a comparison with the passport samples this should be
taken into account since the passport samples are not biased due to truncations in the
sample. This is so that when drawing a comparison with the results of the passport
sample one keeps in mind that the height of the rurales is upwardly biased. Figure 2 and
3 provide us with a visual comparison in the trends in height. These trends pertain to
means no regression results.
23
Table 7. Regression model for rurales. Dependent variable: Height (cm) Independent variables Truncation Points 159cm (3a) 160cm (3b) 159 cm (4a) 160 cm (4b) Constant 170.47* 169.85* 168.41* 167.68* Occupation Unskilled -1.21 -1.24 -1.21 -0.57 Skilled manual workers Provenance North Bajío -0.46 -0.5 -0.43 -0.47 Center -1.20 -1.42 -1.19 -1.40 South -2.43 -0.29 -0.24 -2.91 Age (years) 18 -2.41 -2.47 19 -1.21 -1.14 20 -2.65 -2.74 21 -2.12 -2.29 22 -1.67 -1.75 23 or more Birth decade 1840s 1850s 1.11 1.52 1.12 1.53 1860s 0.56 0.81 0.57 0.82 1870s 0.07 0.24 0.07 0.24 1880s -0.93 -0.96 -0.89 -0.93 1890s -1.60 -1.71 -1.62 -1.70 χ2 86.78 91.67 81.55 87.32 N 6129 6027 4495 4412 Note: The regressions were estimated with STATA’s trunc reg routine (trunc reg). Constant refers to adult, skilled manual workers from North of Mexico born between 1840 and 1849. * Significant at 1% level.
.
24
Note: Raw means for both samples. 1890-1910 military means correspond to Federal Soldiers obtained from López-Alonso & Porras 2003
Figure 2. Males passport and military trends
158
160
162
164
166
168
170
172
174
Born 1840
Born 1850
Born 1860
Born 1870
Born 1880
Born 1890
Born 1900
Born 1910
decade of birth
heign in cm
White Collar Elite Rurales/Federales
Figure 3. Females passport trends
154 156 158 160 162 164 166
Born 1860
Born 1870
Born 1880
Born 1890
Born 1900
Born 1910
Born 1920
decade of birth
height in cm
White Collar Elite
25
Heights in historical perspective.
Figures 2 and 3 show the trends in height calculated from raw means of the
different samples. In the case of the passport samples we observe that there is an
increase over time for both men and women. This appears to be gradual process, and
there does not appear to be a decline in living standards for cohorts who were born and
grew up during the dictatorship of Porfirio Díaz. By looking at the trends it does not
appear that this trend was accelerated for the cohorts who were born and grew up during
the Post-Revolution suggesting that political turmoil and the so alleged effects of the
dictatorship did not take a toll on the living standards of the elite. The results of this
sample could be interpreted as the biological standards of living being a reflection of the
efforts to modernize Mexico. The social policies oriented towards the improvement in
public health, the development of transportation systems that integrated markets had
positive effects. Enhanced market integration enabled the cities to have wider variety
and fresher foodstuffs therefore making it possible to have a better nutrition and health.
These improvements reached mainly the well off urban literate portion of the
population.
On the other hand, the trend of the rurales sample declines over time. This
would mean that the biological standard of living of the lower class of the population
was deteriorating for those cohorts who were born and grew up in the last decades of
the nineteenth century. The rurales are more representative of the rural lower strata of
the population and still this sample undercounts the lowest deciles of the income
distribution since this militia did not recruit among the indigent portion of the
population. This deterioration is consistent with the continuous financial difficulties that
the government faced throughout most of the period and its neglect of the popular
26
classes. The efforts to modernize the nation and the benefits of export led growth of the
late nineteenth century did not have a positive effect on the standard of living of the
rural lower strata of the population, since the social policies implemented by the
government had a very limited scope: the urban poor in Mexico City. Unfortunately,
this data base does not contain people who were born and grew up during the Post-
Revolution, but previous studies have found what would be the continuation of the
story, the average height of the lower strata of the population stagnated for most of the
Díaz dictatorship, slightly declined during the Revolution and then modestly recovered
in the decades that followed.36
Conclusions
The analyses of the samples examined in this study tell two different trajectories
on the evolution of biological standards of living of the Mexican population. Each
sample corresponds to a particular segment of the society, each being a piece of this
inequality puzzle in the economic history of Mexico. Before and after the revolution
there was a height differential across social classes and across regions. The results
suggest that the gap does not narrow for cohorts born and growing up after the
Revolution, evidencing a persistent inequality in the biological standards of living of the
population. Members of the upper strata of the population were taller than those of the
popular classes. The fact that the gap does not narrow for people who grew up in the
period of the post-revolution, suggests that the gap in biological standards of living
persisted and points out that the rent-seeking model of the Porfiriato was somewhat
beneficial for growth promotion, but not for decreasing inequality.
These results substantiate with anthropometric evidence the claim made by the
new economic history of Mexico that Revolution was not a social movement but a
36 See López-Alonso & Porras Condey 2003, p. 179
27
political one.37 In addition, they show that as the main sector of the economy continued
to operate in the same way from Díaz’s dictatorship (1876-1910) to the end of the 1920s
decade regardless of the continuous episodes of political instability of the first decades
of the twentieth century, the evolution of biological standards of living followed a trend
that increased inequality. This would not be unusual in light of the experience of some
countries during the onset of industrialization such as England. The Revolution took a
toll on the population since a million people died during the worst years of armed
rebellion.38 On the other hand, if we leave aside those who died as a result of the
conflict, and we focus on those who were born and grew up during this time period, it is
not clear that the political turmoil was particularly harsh on their living conditions. The
rich did not get shorter and poor experienced a slight recovery.
However, if we take into consideration that at the same time Mexico was
experiencing the onset of public sanitation we could have expected somewhat different
results in the evolution of statures of the working classes. Height differentials should
have narrowed across social classes. Demographic behavior can partially explain this
phenomenon. There was a severe loss of human lives as a result of the Revolution, yet
the population growth rapidly recovered and continued to grow at an accelerated pace
for much of the twentieth century as a by-product of public sanitation in the way of
declining mortality rates, interestingly, fertility rates remained high. Poor results in
social spending inadequate design of policy making can also explain persistent
inequality in the biological standards of living. This study is just a first attempt to shed
light on the history of living standards and poverty in Mexico beyond anecdotal
evidence, beyond regional and sector specific studies and prior to 1950.
37 See Womack, 1978; Haber, Razo, Maurer, 2003. 38 McCaa, 2003.
28
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