You are invited to attend the lecture by Stefan Houpt, Hunger in Hell’s Kitchen: Real Wages and Deprivation in Spain’s Early Industrialization. The Bilbao Estuary, 1914-1935.

Date: Thursday, February 24, 2011
Time: 3-5 pm
Place: Deutz Room, Institute of the Americas Complex, UCSD

The lecture description: Did late industrialization in Europe’s periphery improve life for the urban class? This paper examines living conditions in northern Spain during early industrialization in the interwar period. We concentrate on the Basque country, one of the emerging industrial areas from the 1870s on. Historiography holds that in the medium-term urban development and industrialization increased real wages and overall standards of living. We seek to contrast this empirically using high frequency data (monthly) from 1914 until 1936. Our conclusions are that real income did not improve and that demographic and social deprivation variables are highly responsive to short term economic shocks in the form of food and housing price increases. This response points to an urban population living close to subsistence levels; the urban penalty was by far not being compensated by the higher nominal wages received. This continued deprivation more than the political agitation may have been the urban origin of future civil war violence

About Stefan Houpt: He holds a Ph.D. in Economics from the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid and is Associate Professor of Economic History and Institutions and Researcher of the Figuerola Institute of Social Science and History at Universidad Carlos III, Madrid. He is currently on sabbatical leave at the University of California, San Diego; and has been Visiting Scholar at Lund University, Sweden. He has been a member of the editorial board of Revista de Historia Económica and formerly its junior editor. He was the coordinator of the European Historical Economics Conference 2003 and the World Economic History Congress in 1998. He has contributed to some of the main journals in his field, co-edited two books on shipbuilding in Spain, and has co-authored chapters on twentieth century industrialization in Europe and Spain in the respective economic history textbooks. His current research interests include stock exchanges and capital market integration in interwar Spain, the economic causes of the Spanish Civil War, living conditions during early twentieth century industrialization, and Basque labor conflict during industrial take-off. He is a researcher of the National R&D program sponsored by the Spanish Ministry of Education in a project led by Joan Rosés ‘Explaining the Development of European Regions, 1850-2008.’