The Regional Dimension of Biological Welfare: Argentina in the 1920s

Abstract

A large database containing the heights of recruits for the 1924 cohort allows us to review the regional dimensions of Argentina's biological welfare, in particular the idea that concentration of resources in Buenos Aires and the Pampa region left the interior provinces economically backward and physiologically weak. The findings confirm that very large differences in stature separated recruits of the Pampa region from those of the Northwest and Northeast in the 1920s. Estimates suggest that transportation improvements, urbanization, and basic literacy had a positive impact on the height of Argentines. In turn, districts with peasant economies, minifundia, high proportion of non-owners, and greater disease risk were associated with lower-than-average heights. Mean stature also correlated with the type of agrarian production: people living in cereal areas were generally taller than people coming from districts producing sugar or other non-export goods. Data on average height shows greater variability across space than any other data on income or wages, and thus serves to uncover this hidden dimension -the regional- of welfare.