Our results show that living standards in Spanish America were higher than in most of the world

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Reunión Científica: Iberoamérica y España antes de las independencias: El impacto económico de las reformas ilustradas y de las guerras napoleónicas

International Meeting: Spain and Iberoamerica before Independence: the Impact of the Enlightened Reforms and of the Napoleonic Wars

Madrid, 10 y 11 de mayo de 2012 Madrid, May 10-11, 2012

FUNDACIÓN RAMÓN ARECES

Economic and physical welfare in Bourbon America Rafael Dobado

This work examines the living standards of the Spanish America’s population from a double perspective. On the one hand, it studies an indicator of the economic welfare such as the real wages of urban and rural labourers and miners in different territories (New Spain, High Peru, New Granade, Chile and River Plate) and compares them with: a) a worldwide sample for the early nineteenth century; and b) some Northwestern European developed countries during most of the eighteenth century and the first decade of the nineteenth century. On the other hand, it analyses in comparative –North America and Europe included- form indicators of biological welfare such as physical statures in the eighteenth century. Our results show that living standards in Spanish America were higher than in most of the world. This finding suggests the need of revising available estimations of GDP per capita and of attributing the Great Divergence of the Spanish America with the most developed countries to the nineteenth century.

*Todos los derechos de propiedad intelectual son del autor. Queda prohibida la reproducción total o parcial de la obra sin autorización expresa del autor.

*All intellectual property rights belong to the author. Total or partial reproduction of the work without express permission of the author is forbidden.