A Contribution to the Study of Inequality in Spain during the Sixties: Income and Food Consumption.

Abstract

The transformations that affected the Spanish economy and society during the sixties have been up to now insufficiently studied from the perspective of their impact on well-being levels. Thus, here it is proposed a method to overcome the methodological obstacles that have avoided the evaluation of provincial income inequality indexes from the Spanish Household Budget Inquiry of 1964-1965 and it is studied the relationship between those indexes and some variables. Then, the study turns to the differences in provincial levels of food consumption and their determinants. An estimation of the provincial ecological footprint of diets (as an index of their sustainability) follows. As a conclusion, the relationship between income levels, their social and territorial distribution and some of the main items which define the welfare of a society seem to be much more problematic and complex than what an excessively simplistic version of the mainstream economic theory may suggest.