Template-type: ReDIF-Paper 1.0
Author-Name: James Simpson
Author-Workplace-Name: Facultad de CC. Económicas y Empresariales. Universidad Complutense de Madrid.
Title: Technical change, labour absorption and living standards in Andalucía, 1886-1936 
Abstract: Economic historians have specified the land problem in Spain as one of the reasons for the failure of the 
	Second Republic and for the nation's bitter Civil War between 1936 and 1939.
	They have especially singled out the region of Andalucia in the southern part of the country for the 
	underutilization of its agricultural resources, concentration of landed property, and the poverty experienced 
	by much of its rural population. If the economic rationality of pre-Civil War farming methods in Andalucia 
	is now better understood, historians continue to emphasize the social costs, identifying the miserable 
	conditions in which many agricultural laborers lived as the inevitable result of an extensive farming system 
	with low wages and a highly seasonal employment demand. These conditions led an appreciable number of people 
	to take an interest in radical politics, especially anarchism. But, whereas a number of historians have 
	studied social protest, tracing both the development of coherent ideologies and organization of action against 
	landlord or the state during the half century prior to the Civil War, little or no work has been done to show 
	whether the plight of farm laborers improved or deteriorated during the same period. This article tries to 
	remedy this gap In the literature by examining changes in the long run supply and demand for labor in 
	agriculture. It then considers the implications of these changes on worker's living standards. The main 
	conclusion is that, although rural poverty was acute, it is difficult to find evidence of it worsening over 
	the 50 years prior to the 1936-1939 Civil War.

Keywords: Andalucía 1886-1936, Labour absorption.

Length: 32 pages 
Creation-Date: 1988 
Number: 88-10  
X-File-Ref: http://america.sim.ucm.es/repec/ucm/ref/doctra88-10.txt	 
File-URL: https://eprints.ucm.es/id/eprint/23202/1/8810.pdf
File-Format: Application/pdf
Handle: RePEc:ucm:doctra:88-10