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Wed 12 April
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Thu 13 April
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Fri 14 April
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Sat 15 April
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Thursday 13 April 2023 11.00 - 13.00
W-6 SOC07 Measuring Economic Inequality in Mediterranean Europe (14 - 18 CE)
Västra Hamngatan 25 AK2 135
Network: Social Inequality Chair: Lluís To Figueras
Organizers: Rosa Congost, Lluís To Figueras Discussants: -
Gabriel Jover-Avella, Joana-Maria Pujadas-Mora : Handling Inequality: Women Agency in Southern Europe (Mallorca, 17th Century)
Inequality has become a mainstream topic in economic and social history. In this way, it has been shown that over the pre-industrial period there was a marked trend towards greater inequality than had been estimated in the seminal studies on the subject, which has led to the so-called "long ... (Show more)
Inequality has become a mainstream topic in economic and social history. In this way, it has been shown that over the pre-industrial period there was a marked trend towards greater inequality than had been estimated in the seminal studies on the subject, which has led to the so-called "long Kuznets curve". This increasing trend was only interrupted by The Great Leveller (the Black Plague of 1348) and the ‘inequality pause’ in the second half of seventeenth century. However, the question is how inequalities hampered economic development and shaped the individual lives.
In former studies we have shown the inequalities between social classes and communities (parishes) of the island of Majorca through catastros, tithes and population censuses and other aggregate data in the seventeenth century. Also, we have analysed the patterns of labour market, women seasonal migrations and wages using farms accounts, particularly for the women olive pickers. The results of these works allow us to go a step further and ask how women contributed to socio-economic inequalities.
The aim of this paper is the shed light on the relationship between land property inequalities, labour market and women agency through the case study of the female olive pickers of the island of Mallorca in mid seventeenth century. To this effect, we want to answer to the following questions: How did rural women labourers handle the inequality in a specialized agrarian economy in the seventeenth century? Had they some room for social agency? How did they manage their lives to escape from poverty individually (life course) and collectively (social action)? We will respond them using a sample of more than hundred reconstruction of women individual trajectories, specifically of olive pickers, built linking their incomes from farm accounts, dowries from notarial documents, and sociodemographic features from parish registers and other local sources about poverty from two Majorcan villages, Binissalem and Santa Margalida. These trajectories will be analysed using a descriptive approach as Gini and Theil indicators, Lorenz curves and Palma ratio. (Show less)

Juli Moreno Peré : Inequality Trends during the XIVth Century: the Dowry as an Indicator of Vic’s Standards of Living
The late medieval crisis has been one of the current topics for new research by preindustrial historians. Recent evidence suggests that demographic decrease started in Europe decades before the Black Death arrived, and there was a certain decline in inequality right after the epidemic; but what was the precise evolution ... (Show more)
The late medieval crisis has been one of the current topics for new research by preindustrial historians. Recent evidence suggests that demographic decrease started in Europe decades before the Black Death arrived, and there was a certain decline in inequality right after the epidemic; but what was the precise evolution of that divergence? This question is addressed by exploring the standards of living of Vic’s population during the XIVth century in order to assess the impact of economic and social crises among urban and rural communities. The methodology used is the female dowry within marriage contracts, a valuable source because it is representative of all kinds of social groups (peasants, artisans, merchants, lords…), and can be applied as an indicator of household wealth. The results argue that inequality changes were constantly fluctuating depending on the professional category, and in a broader perspective show a more egalitarian society before and during the first two decades after the Black Death, yet an increase of inequality by the end of the XIVth century. (Show less)

Albert Reixach Sala : Inequalities, Intergenerational Mobility and Local Power in Late Medieval Crown of Aragon: the City of Girona, c. 1360-c.1520
This paper proposal deals with the analysis of the connections between intergenerational mobility and access to local power or urban office in Late Medieval Crown of Aragon through the case study of the city of Girona. Endowed with a remarkable series of direct tax sources and a wide array of ... (Show more)
This paper proposal deals with the analysis of the connections between intergenerational mobility and access to local power or urban office in Late Medieval Crown of Aragon through the case study of the city of Girona. Endowed with a remarkable series of direct tax sources and a wide array of municipal and notarial records, the regional capital of north-eastern Catalonia consists of a representative example to engage in debates on the rates of social mobility or the openness of elites in premodern Europe. Tax censuses will be combined with lists of political offices and the reconstruction of families included in a dataset covering the long period between approximately the aftermath of the Black Death and the beginning of the 16th century. The study will also take into consideration several phenomena that could have impact on this mobility such as marriage patterns or mortality crises arising from outbreaks, epidemics or wars. (Show less)

Rosa Ros, Josep Mas & Rosa Congost : Chasing the Heir. Marriage Market and Dowries in Societies with Impartible Inheritance (Northeastern Catalonia, c.1750-1800)
The aim of this paper is to present a methodological and theoretical framework, as well as to show some preliminary results of a case study on the marriage market in a society where the endowment was based on the system of impartible inheritance. More specifically, we show the case of ... (Show more)
The aim of this paper is to present a methodological and theoretical framework, as well as to show some preliminary results of a case study on the marriage market in a society where the endowment was based on the system of impartible inheritance. More specifically, we show the case of a rural community in northeastern Catalonia, a western Mediterranean European region, during the second half of the 18th century, that is, in the late <>.
Thus, we argue that in rural societies with impartible inheritance systems, dowries reveal the economic status of families and therefore its distribution evidences the inequality. In this way, the core idea of this argument is, on the one hand, the fact that in rural societies land availability was especially determinant for the reproduction and survival of family units. On the other hand, focussing the patrimonial transmission in few inheritors (usually the eldest son) led families to compete in order to attract the heir of a patrimony which could enable them to improve, or at least maintain, their socioeconomic status. This competition was usually materialized through the dowries, which were mostly monetary, something important regarding its manageable quantification.
In this manner, we have made use of some typical econometric exercises among the academic literature, such as Gini Index, Inequality Extraction Ratio or fraction division, to estimate inequality in a data set of dowries from the second half of the 18th century. Furthermore, due to the informative richness of marriage contracts, which almost always indicated the profession of every male individual, we also have analysed inequality within and between different social groups, as well as endogamy and social mobility (horizontal, upward or downward).
Finally, after applying the above-mentioned exercises, our results suggest that inequality increased during the last decades of the covered period, which is consistent with the socioeconomic context of Catalonia: huge demographic pressure, inflation (primarily on assets which were intensive in land factor) and proletarianization, the latter undoubtedly emphasized by the Catalan impartible inheritance system. (Show less)



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