Height and infant mortality during the civil war and the autarchy: The Valencian Community (Spain)

This article analyzes the biological wellbeing among male conscripts in the region of Valencia (Eastern Spain) during the Civil War and the subsequent period of autarchy during Franco’s dictatorship. For this purpose we use 124,284 height records from 20yr conscripts born between 1900 and 1954 from ten municipalities along with region-level infant mortality rates. We analyze inter-cohort deviations from a secular trend which is established upon cohorts that were not exposed to war and postwar-related environmental stress. Results show that the mean height cohort trend slowed down meaningfully among cohorts that were raised in the context of the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) and/or during the autarchic postwar decade (1940-1949). Interestingly, the effects of this environmental stress are to have been greater during the adolescent period. The height series at the local level evidence very dissimilar magnitudes of the nutritional crisis in this Spanish region. The worsening of the net nutritional status was greater in industrial towns as well as in rural areas with some agriculture specialization. By contrast, the impact of war and postwar, as measure by height, was negligible in other areas. Finally, although infant mortality declined during the decade of 1940s the combined analysis of height and mortality uncovers that such decline was likely associated with medical advances and interventions in the field of hygiene rather than with improved nutrition.