Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Methodology, Sources and New Evidence

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
Regional Inequality in Spain

Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in Economic History ((PEHS))

  • 518 Accesses

Abstract

This chapter presents the methodology used to construct the new estimates of regional GDP in Spain, breaking down the territory into NUTS3 and NUTS2 regions (provinces and autonomous communities respectively) and dividing sectors homogeneously into five production areas: agriculture, mining, manufacturing and public utilities, construction and services. Taken as a whole in combination with data on regional population, this information provides a picture of regional inequality in per-capita income in Spain over the long term, starting from the early stages of modern economic growth. This new quantitative evidence enables to point out some of the stylized facts observed in the regional distribution of economic activity in Spain that will guide the analysis over the course of the book.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 89.00
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Hardcover Book
USD 119.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Notes

  1. 1.

    For the nineteenth century and the first third of the twentieth, the only data available are those provided by Álvarez Llano (1986), who reports the distribution of GDP by autonomous community (NUTS2) for six different points in time. However, the fact that the exact method the author used to calculate these figures is unknown undermines their reliability. Among others, Carreras (1990), Martín (1992), Germán Zubero et al. (2001) and Domínguez (2002) have based their analyses of regional inequality in Spain on this dataset.

  2. 2.

    The GDP estimates for Spain’s provinces in 1860, 1900, 1910, 1920 and 1930 were calculated in collaboration with Joan Ramon Rosés (see Rosés et al. 2010). The estimates for 1870, 1880 and 1890 are from Díez-Minguela et al. (2016).

  3. 3.

    See Eurostat.

  4. 4.

    These data series were compiled by researchers who played an active part in designing the national accounts and are therefore methodologically comparable.

  5. 5.

    See, for instance, Good (1994) for the Habsburg Empire pre–First World War, Esposto (1997) for Italy 1870–1910, and Caruana-Galizia (2013) and Bazot (2014) for France in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

  6. 6.

    There would also be a need for historical data series of national GDP broken down by sector, since these are the basis for the territorial distribution of economic activity.

  7. 7.

    Two exceptions of countries with historical income series compiled using methodology similar to direct estimation are the US (Easterlin 1957, 1960) and Japan (Fukao et al. 2015).

  8. 8.

    Although the estimation of purchasing power parities and regional deflators for the 155 years analysed lies outside the scope of this study, in Chap. 4, in order to test the robustness of the results, we provide a comparison between the evolution of regional inequality estimated with national deflators and the evolution that would be recorded if territorial price differences were taken into account.

  9. 9.

    Although today there are 50 provinces in Spain, initially the Canary Islands (two provinces) were a single province and appear as such in statistics for the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In 1927 they were split into the two provinces we know today, bringing the total up to 50.

  10. 10.

    To some extent this is an anomaly in the context of Europe, since most countries have seen changes in their internal and external borders over the course of history. An extreme example would be the changes that took place after the First World War (1914–1918).

  11. 11.

    In some regions the Spanish language coexists alongside the local language (mainly Catalan, Basque or Galician). It is from these regions that demands have traditionally been made for a more federal view of the state, although this is not exclusively the case, as can be seen from the cantonalist movements in Murcia and Andalusia in the 1870s.

  12. 12.

    This would refer to Andalusia, Aragon, the Balearic Islands, the Canary Islands, Catalonia, Valencia, Galicia and the Basque Country, all recognized as “historical nationalities”.

  13. 13.

    This is relevant because we are carrying out a historical analysis and sometimes refer to the autonomous communities in periods that predate their creation. The regions’ historical continuity makes this reasonable.

  14. 14.

    The various different NUTS divisions in Spain are listed in Table A1 of the Appendix.

  15. 15.

    For the 1880 estimation we use the closest available wage data, which are for 1887.

  16. 16.

    We have taken the 1915 values for 1910 and the 1931 values for 1930.

  17. 17.

    The year when more precise records of the mining workforce were first given in the population census (Foro Hispánico de Cultura 1957).

  18. 18.

    For this sector we follow Crafts’ (2005) refinement of the original Geary and Stark (2002) methodology and use tax data to allocate non-wage manufacturing income across regions.

  19. 19.

    We aggregated the original data in the population census following Foro Hispánico de Cultura (1957) and the methodology used by Nicolau (2005) in her estimates of the national figures.

  20. 20.

    “Jornales de los obreros de la construcción de carreteras durante el año 1860 en reales de vellón”, Madrazo (1984, p. 208).

  21. 21.

    We use a simple average given that no data on active population in each occupation are available and the average cannot therefore be weighted.

  22. 22.

    Gipuzkoa, Lugo, Ourense, Oviedo, Bizkaia and Zamora.

  23. 23.

    To test this result we take wages for 1897, the nearest date available. In that year the industrial wage in Navarre was 3 per cent higher than the Spanish average weighted by the industrial population. If we apply this percentage to the Spanish value for 1860, the figure obtained almost exactly matches the figure we calculated at the start.

  24. 24.

    “Jornales fabriles en las capitales de provincia (pesetas) en 1896–1897”, Sánchez Alonso (1995), pp. 294–295. The original source is the Instituto Geográfico y Estadístico (1903), pp. XLVII–XLIX.

  25. 25.

    Simpson (1995), pp. 190 and 199 respectively.

  26. 26.

    The coverage provided by the wages dataset is far from perfect, which meant we had to make some assumptions. First, that the wages series, while not homogeneous over time, is representative of industry. And second, as regards the use of nominal wages, that there will be a bias given that price levels vary between regions (Geary and Stark 2002, pp. 933–934).

  27. 27.

    The years consulted are 1856, 1878–1979, 1890, 1893 and 1900.

  28. 28.

    Due to lack of data, only seven industry sectors are considered for 1913 and 1929 (food, textiles and footwear, metal, chemicals, paper, wood and cork, and ceramic).

  29. 29.

    The use of this source to construct factor shares and then apply them retrospectively means assuming that the intensity of factor use in 1958 is a good proxy for previous years. This assumption has also been made in previous estimations of industrial production indices for Spain (Carreras 1983; Prados de la Escosura 2003).

  30. 30.

    Given that no fiscal information is available, we assume a labour share similar to the Spanish total for the Basque Country provinces and Navarre.

  31. 31.

    The lack of data for 1870 means we have had to obtain the provincial shares for manufacturing by interpolating the values for 1860 and 1880.

  32. 32.

    Since Herranz’s (2008) dataset only applies from 1870 onwards, the data for 1860 were based on urban population alone.

  33. 33.

    Wages were taken from the sources mentioned for the other economic sectors and from Rosés and Sánchez-Alonso (2004). For 1870 (given that no population census was published), the provincial values for the service sector were obtained as an average of 1860 and 1880.

  34. 34.

    Table A1 in the Appendix shows the NUTS1, NUTS2 and NUTS3 regions in Spain with the nomenclature currently used by Eurostat, which reproduces the official administrative nomenclature used in Spain. This nomenclature, however, is in Spanish and in some cases involves rather lengthy names (e.g. Comunidad Foral de Navarra, Principado de Asturias, Región de Murcia, Comunidad Valenciana). To simplify things we use shorter (and sometimes anglicized) versions throughout the main text when referring to the autonomous communities (i.e. Navarre, Asturias, Murcia, Valencia, etc.). The official denominations and equivalent versions we use in the text can be found in Table A2 in the Appendix.

  35. 35.

    The joint GDP share of these five autonomous communities in this case would have been around 55%, to a large degree due to the high participation of Andalusia in the mid-nineteenth century.

  36. 36.

    Within this group, Asturias and Cantabria are those that have probably experienced the most ups and downs in the course of their history.

  37. 37.

    In fact these four regions that represented 31.2% of the population in 1860 represent only 15.3% today.

  38. 38.

    The coefficient of variation, which measures the relationship between the statistical average and the standard deviation, takes on values between 0 and 1. A value of 0 would indicate an absence of dispersion or inequality, and the more it increases, the more it reflects inequality.

References

  • Álvarez Llano, R. (1986). Evolución de la estructura económica regional de España en la historia: una aproximación. Situación, 1, 5–61.

    Google Scholar 

  • Álvarez-Nogal, C., & Prados de la Escosura, L. (2007). The decline of Spain (1500–1850): Conjectural estimates. European Review of Economic History, 11(3), 319–366.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Alcaide Inchausti, J. (2003). Evolución económica de las regiones y provincias españolas en el siglo XX. Bilbao: Fundación BBVA.

    Google Scholar 

  • Andrés Álvarez, V., et al. (1962). Tabla input-output de la economía española. Año de, 1958. Madrid: Organización Sindical Española.

    Google Scholar 

  • Anuario Estadístico de España. (n.d.). Madrid.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bazot, G. (2014). Interregional inequalities, convergence, and growth in France from 1840 to 1911. Annals of Economics and Statistics, (113/114), 309–345.

    Google Scholar 

  • BBV. (1999). Renta Nacional de España y su distribución provincial. Serie homogénea. Años 1955 a 1993 y avances 1994 a 1997 (Vol. I–II). Bilbao: Fundación BBV.

    Google Scholar 

  • Betrán, C. (1999). Difusión y localización industrial en España durante el primer tercio del siglo XX. Revista de Historia Económica, 17(3), 663–696.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bringas Gutiérrez, M. A. (2000). La productividad de los factores en la agricultura española (1752–1935). Banco de España.

    Google Scholar 

  • Carreras, A. (1983). La producció industrial espanyola i italiana des de mitjan segle XIX fins a l’actualitat. Ph.D. dissertation, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona.

    Google Scholar 

  • Carreras, A. (1990). Fuentes y datos para el análisis regional de la industrialización española. In A. Carreras & J. Nadal (Eds.), Pautas regionales de la industrialización española (siglos XIX y XX) (pp. 3–20). Barcelona: Ariel.

    Google Scholar 

  • Caruana-Galizia, P. (2013). Estimating French regional income: Departmental per capita gross value added, 1872–1911. Research in Economic History, 29, 71–95.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Censo de Población. (n.d.). Madrid.

    Google Scholar 

  • Crafts, N. F. R. (2005). Regional GDP in Britain, 1871–1911: Some estimates. Scottish Journal of Political Economy, 52(1), 54–64.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Díez-Minguela, A., Martinez-Galarraga, J., & Tirado, D. A. (2016). Why did Spanish regions not converge before the Civil War? Agglomeration economies and (regional) growth revisited. Revista de Historia Económica/Journal of Iberian and Latin American Economic History, 39(4), 417–448.

    Google Scholar 

  • Domínguez, R. (2002). La riqueza de las regiones. Las desigualdades económicas regionales en España, 1700–2000. Madrid: Alianza.

    Google Scholar 

  • Easterlin, R. A. (1957). State income estimates. In S. Kuznets & D. S. Thomas (Eds.), Population redistribution and economic growth, United States, 1870–1950, vol. 1, Methodological considerations and reference tables. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society.

    Google Scholar 

  • Easterlin, R. A. (1960). Interregional differences in per capita income, population, and total income, 1840–1950. In NBER (Ed.), Trends in the American economy in the nineteenth century. Studies in income and wealth (Vol. 24). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Esposto, A. G. (1997). Estimating regional per capita income: Italy, 1861–1914. Journal of European Economic History, 26, 585–604.

    Google Scholar 

  • Estadística Administrativa de la Contribución Industrial y de Comercio. (n.d.). Madrid.

    Google Scholar 

  • Estadística Minera y Metalúrgica. (n.d.). Madrid.

    Google Scholar 

  • Foro Hispánico de Cultura. (1957). La población activa española de 1950 a 1957. Madrid.

    Google Scholar 

  • Fukao, K., Bassino, J. P., Makino, T., Papryzycki, R., Settsu, T., Takashima, M., & Tokui, J. (2015). Regional inequality and industrial structure in Japan: 1874–2008. Tokyo: Maruzen.

    Google Scholar 

  • Geary, F., & Stark, T. (2002). Examining Ireland’s post-famine economic growth performance. The Economic Journal, 112, 919–935.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • GEHR—Grupo de Estudios de Historia Rural. (1991). Estadísticas históricas de la producción agraria española, 1859–1935. Madrid: Ministerio de Agricultura, Pesca y Alimentación.

    Google Scholar 

  • Germán Zubero, L., Llopis, E., Maluquer, J., & Zapata, S. (Eds.). (2001). Historia económica regional de España, siglos XIX y XX. Barcelona: Crítica.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gollin, D. (2002). Getting income shares right. Journal of Political Economy, 110(21), 458–474.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Good, D. (1994). The economic lag of Central and Eastern Europe: Income estimates for the Habsburg successor states, 1870–1910. Journal of Economic History, 54(4), 869–891.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Herranz, A. (2008). Infraestructuras y crecimiento económico en España (1850–1935). Madrid: Fundación de los Ferrocarriles Españoles.

    Google Scholar 

  • Instituto Geográfico y Estadístico. (1903). Estadística de la emigración e inmigración de España, 1896–1900. Madrid: Ministerio de Instrucción Pública y Bellas Artes.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kuznets, S. (1966). Modern economic growth: Rate, structure, and spread. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kuznets, S. (1971). Economic growth of nations: Total output and production structure. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Llopis, E. (Ed.). (2004). El legado económico del Antiguo Régimen en España. Barcelona: Crítica.

    Google Scholar 

  • Madrazo, S. (1984). El sistema de transportes en España, 1750–1850. Madrid: Turner.

    Google Scholar 

  • Martín, M. (1992). Pautas y tendencias de desarrollo económico regional en España: una visión retrospectiva. In J. L. García Delgado & A. Pedreño (Eds.), Ejes territoriales de desarrollo: España en la Europa de los noventa (pp. 133–155). Madrid: Colegio de Economistas de Madrid.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ministerio de Trabajo, Comercio e Industria. (1927). Estadística de salarios y jornadas de trabajo referida al período 1914–1925. Madrid.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ministerio de Trabajo y Previsión. (1931). Estadística de salarios y jornadas de trabajo referida al período 1914–1930. Madrid.

    Google Scholar 

  • Nadal, J., & Tafunell, X. (1992). Sant Martí de Provençals, pulmó industrial de Barcelona (1847–1992). Barcelona: Columna.

    Google Scholar 

  • Nicolau, R. (2005). Población, salud y actividad. In A. Carreras & X. Tafunell (Eds.), Estadísticas históricas de España: siglos XIX–XX (pp. 77–154). Bilbao: Fundación BBVA.

    Google Scholar 

  • Parejo, A. (2001). Industrialización, desindustrialización y nueva industrialización de las regiones españolas (1950–2000). Un enfoque desde la historia económica. Revista de Historia Industrial, (19–20), 15–75.

    Google Scholar 

  • Prados de la Escosura, L. (2003). El progreso económico de España 1850–2000. Bilbao: Fundación BBVA.

    Google Scholar 

  • Prados de la Escosura, L. (2016). Spain’s historical national accounts: Expenditure and output, 1850–2015. EHES Working Papers in Economic History, No 103.

    Google Scholar 

  • Prados de la Escosura, L. (2017). Spanish economic growth, 1850–2015. Palgrave Studies in Economic History, Palgrave Macmillan.

    Google Scholar 

  • Reher, D. S. (1994). Ciudades, procesos de urbanización y sistemas urbanos en la Península Ibérica, 1550–1991. In M. Guàrdia, F. J. Monclús, & J. L. Oyón (Eds.), Atlas histórico de las ciudades europeas. Península Ibérica (pp. 1–30). Barcelona: Salvat—Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rosés, J. R., Martinez-Galarraga, J., & Tirado, D. A. (2010). The upswing of regional income inequality in Spain (1860–1930). Explorations in Economic History, 47(2), 244–257.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Rosés, J. R., & Sánchez-Alonso, B. (2004). Regional wage convergence in Spain 1850–1930. Explorations in Economic History, 41(4), 404–425.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sánchez Alonso, B. (1995). Las causas de la emigración española 1880–1930. Madrid: Alianza Editorial.

    Google Scholar 

  • Silvestre, J. (2003). Migraciones interiores y mercado de trabajo en España, 1877–1936. Ph.D. dissertation, Universidad de Zaragoza.

    Google Scholar 

  • Simpson, J. (1994). La producción y la productividad agraria española, 1890–1936. Revista de Historia Económica, 12(1), 43–84.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Simpson, J. (1995). Real wages and labour mobility in Spain, 1860–1936. In P. Scholliers & V. Zamagni (Eds.), Labour reward (pp. 182–200). London: Edward Elgar.

    Google Scholar 

  • Williamson, J. G. (1965). Regional inequality and the process of national development: A description of the patterns. Economic Development and Cultural Change, 13(4), 1–84.

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of València, València, Spain

    Alfonso Díez-Minguela, Julio Martinez-Galarraga & Daniel A. Tirado-Fabregat

Authors
  1. Alfonso Díez-Minguela
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Julio Martinez-Galarraga
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Daniel A. Tirado-Fabregat
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2018 The Author(s)

About this chapter

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this chapter

Díez-Minguela, A., Martinez-Galarraga, J., Tirado-Fabregat, D.A. (2018). Methodology, Sources and New Evidence. In: Regional Inequality in Spain. Palgrave Studies in Economic History. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96110-1_3

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96110-1_3

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-96109-5

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-96110-1

  • eBook Packages: Economics and FinanceEconomics and Finance (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation