1 Preston, S. H. and Van de Walle, E., ‘Urban French mortality in the nineteenth century’, Population Studies 32 (1978), 275–97CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; R. Woods and J. Woodward eds., Urban disease and mortality in nineteenth-century England (London, 1984); J. Woodward, ‘Medicine and the city: the nineteenth-century experience’, in Woods and Woodward, Urban disease and mortality, 65–78; G. Kearns, ‘The urban penalty and the population history of England’, in A. Brandström and L. G. Tederbrand eds., Society, health and population during the demographic transition (Stockholm, 1988), 213–35; G. Kearns, ‘Biology, class and the urban penalty’, in G. Kearns and C. J. Withers eds., Urbanising Britain: essays on class and community in the nineteenth century (Cambridge, 1991), 12–30; P. Bairoch, Cities and economic development: from the dawn of history to the present (Chicago, 1998); R. Schofield, D. S. Reher and A. Bideau eds., The decline of mortality in Europe (Oxford, 1991); G. Mooney, The geography of mortality decline in Victorian London (Liverpool, 1994); J. Vögele, Urban mortality Change in Britain and Germany, 1870–1913 (Liverpool, 1990); Vögele, J., ‘Urbanization and the urban mortality change in Imperial Germany’, Health and Place 6 (2000), 41–55CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; Szreter, S. and Mooney, G., ‘Urbanization, mortality, and the standard of living debate: new estimates of the expectation of life in nineteenth century British cities’, Economic History Review 51 (1998), 84–112CrossRefGoogle Scholar; R. Woods, The demography of Victorian England and Wales (Cambridge, 2000); Woods, R., ‘Urban–rural mortality differentials: an unresolved debate’, Population and Development Review 29 (2003), 29–46CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Haines, M. R., ‘The urban mortality transition in the United States, 1800–1940’, Annales de Démographie Historique 1 (2001), 33–64CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Haines, M. R., ‘Growing incomes, shrinking people – can economic development be hazardous to your health? Historical evidence for the United States, England, and the Netherlands in the nineteenth century’, Social Science History 28, 2 (2004), 249–70Google Scholar. As Woods points out in ‘Urban–rural mortality differentials’, urban growth does not always go hand in hand with excess mortality, for example in Japan and China. On urban penalty in Spain: D. S. Reher, ‘Urbanization and demographic behaviour in Spain, 1860–1930’, in A. Woude, J. de Vries and A, Hayami eds., Urbanization in history: a process of dynamic interactions (Oxford, 1990), 282–99; Reher, D. S., ‘In search of the urban penalty: exploring urban and rural mortality patterns in Spain during the demographic transition’, International Journal of Population Geography 7 (2001), 105–27CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Aguilera, D. Sánchez, ‘Las diferencias territoriales de la mortalidad en Andalucía a fines del siglo XIX’, Boletín de la ADH 14, 2 (1996), 151–71Google Scholar; Recaño, J. and Esteve, A., ‘(Re-)visitando Garcia Faria. Un estudio de los factores espaciales y medioambientales de la mortalidad en la Barcelona de finales del siglo XIX’, Revista de Demografía Histórica 24, 1 (2006), 121–80Google Scholar; D. Ramiro Fariñas, ‘Mortality in hospitals and mortality in the city in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Spain: the effect on the measurement of urban mortality rates of the mortality of outsiders in urban health institutions’, in J. Henderson, P. Horden and A. Pastore eds., The impact of hospitals 300–2000 (Oxford, 2007), 395–416.

2 R. Floud, K. Wachter and A. Gregory, Height, health and history: nutritional status in the United Kingdom, 1750–1980 (Cambridge, 1990); J. Komlos ed., Stature, living standards and economic development: essays in anthropometric history (Chicago, 1994); J. Komlos and J. Baten eds., The biological standards of living in comparative perspective (Stuttgart, 1998); R. H. Steckel and R. Floud eds., Health and welfare during industrialization (Chicago, 1997); T. Cuff, The hidden cost of economic development. The biological standard of living in Antebellum Pennsylvania (Aldershot, 2005); Cinnirella, F., ‘Optimists or pessimists? A reconsideration of nutritional status in Britain, 1740–1865’, European Review of Economy History 12, 3 (2008), 325–54CrossRefGoogle Scholar; L. Heyberger, L'histoire anthropométrique (Bern, 2011). Recent studies, however, reveal that there were exceptions: some Belgian and German cities and Lisbon. See: Heyberger, L'histoire anthropométrique, 76–8; and Reis, J., ‘“Urban premium” or “urban penalty”? The case of Lisbon, 1840–1912’, Historia Agraria 47 (2010), 69–94Google Scholar.

3 R. Floud, R. W. Fogel, B. Harris and S. Hong, Diet, health and work intensity in England and Wales, 1700–1914, Working Paper 15875, National Bureau of Economic Research (Cambridge, MA, 2010); and R. Floud, R. W. Fogel, B. Harris and S. Hong, The changing body. Health, nutrition and human development in the western world since 1700 (Cambridge, 2011).

4 An exception is Easterlin, R. A., ‘How beneficent is the market? A look at the modern history of mortality’, European Review of Economic History 3 (1999), 257–94CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 P. Krugman and R. Wells, Economics, 2nd edn (New York, 2009), here 258–9.

6 The construction of housing is subject to a series of prior conditions which determine the length of the building work (project design, purchase of land, building license, bank loans, hiring of a construction company and construction time; rarely less than two years). Although there are many studies that explain why real estate markets cannot adjust in the short term, we can highlight Smith, L. B., Rosen, K. T. and Fallis, G., ‘Recent developments in economic models of housing markets’, Journal of Economic Literature 26 (1988), 29–64Google Scholar.

7 Higher mortality in working-class neighbourhoods is documented, for example in Barcelona. Between 1837 and 1847, the life expectancy in the rich neighbourhoods of this city was 36.47 years, and in the working-class neighbourhoods 23.55 years. See Recaño and Esteve, ‘(Re-)visitando Garcia Faria’.

8 Pigouvian taxes, such as those imposed on polluting companies or those applied to tobacco consumption, have been effective in reducing negative externalities. However, in this case, they would have been ineffective. Here are two examples: how can a tax be levied on people who transmit diseases by breathing? Would the slaughterhouses have controlled the quality of the meat just because a tax was to be paid?

9 It is difficult to imagine, for example, tens of thousands of people with airborne infectious diseases negotiating private contracts with tens of thousands of healthy people in which they establish the price that the latter should receive from the former if they should sneeze or cough in their presence.

10 The hygiene movement emerged at the beginning of the nineteenth century in Great Britain and in France and was made up of doctors, architects and social reformers. Of the vast literature on the subject, the three publications that we consider to be particularly relevant are: G. Rosen, A history of public health (New York, 1958) and two other more recent works, C. Hamlim, Public health and social justice in the age of Chadwick (Cambridge, 1998); and C. A. Nathanson, ‘The nineteenth century: from miasmas to microbes’, in Disease prevention and social change. The state, society and public health in United States, France, Great Britain and Canada (New York, 2007), 23–46. On the hygiene movement in France, see T. Le Roux, Le siècle des hygienistes (Gallimard, 2010).

11 It is worth mentioning two works which established a clearly positive statistical correlation between the implementation of public health reform and the decline in urban mortality: G. Casselli, ‘Health transition and cause-specific mortality’, in Schofield, Reher and Bideau, The decline of mortality in Europe, 68–97; Cutler, D. M. and Grant, M., ‘The role of public health improvement in health advances: the twentieth-century United States’, Demography 42 (2005), 1–22CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

12 Other measures proposed by the hygienists were paving, waste collection, vaccination, the provision of milk to babies whose mothers could not breastfeed, and campaigns to raise awareness about nutrition and childcare, and personal and domestic hygiene.

13 Floud, Fogel, Harris and Hong, Diet, health and work intensity; Floud, Fogel, Harris and Hong, The changing body.

14 T. McKeown, The modern rise of population (London, 1976).

15 Easterlin, ‘How beneficent is the market?’; Granados, J. A. Tapia, ‘Economía y mortalidad en las ciencias sociales: del Renacimiento a las ideas sobre la Transición Demográfica’, Salud Colectiva 1, 3 (2005), 285–308CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Floud, Fogel, Harris and Hong, Diet, health and work intensity; Floud, Fogel, Harris and Hong, The changing body.

16 E. A. Wrigley and R. S. Schofield, The population history of England, 1541–1871 (London, 1981), 334–40.

17 Harris, B., ‘Public health, nutrition and the decline of mortality: the McKeown thesis revisited’, Social History of Medicine 17, 3 (2004), 379–407CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Floud, Fogel, Harris and Hong, Diet, health and work intensity; Floud, Fogel, Harris and Hong, The changing body, 153–5.

18 McKeown overestimated tuberculosis due to a problem of definition; he did not know that sanitary reform contributed to the reduction of airborne diseases such as tuberculosis, smallpox, diphtheria and scarlet fever; nor was he aware of the increased incidence of other airborne infections such as bronchitis and pneumonia. See Woodward, ‘Medicine and the city’; Szreter, S., ‘The importance of social intervention in Britain's mortality decline, c. 1850–1914: a re-interpretation of the role of public health’, Social History of Medicine 1, 1 (1988), 1–38CrossRefGoogle Scholar; S. Szreter, ‘Mortality and public health, 1815–1914’, Recent Findings of Research in Economic and Social History 14 (1992), http://www.ehs.org; Razzell, P., ‘The conundrum of eighteenth-century English population growth’, Social History of Medicine 11 (1998), 469–500CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; and Woods, The demography of Victorian England and Wales.

19 S. H. Preston, Mortality patterns in national populations: with special reference to recorded causes of death (New York, 1976); Kearns, ‘Biology, class and the urban penalty’; Woods and Woodward, Urban disease and mortality; Vögele, Urban mortality change; Szreter, ‘The importance of social intervention’; Szreter, ‘Mortality and public health’; S. Szreter, Health and wealth: studies in history and policy (Rochester, 2005); Szreter and Mooney, ‘Urbanization, mortality’; Easterlin, ‘How beneficent is the market?’; Woods, The demography of Victorian England and Wales; Harris, ‘Public health’; Floud, Fogel, Harris and Hong, Diet, health and work intensity; Floud, Fogel, Harris and Hong, The changing body.

20 N. S. Scrimshaw, E. Taylor and J. E. Gordon, Interactions of nutrition and infection, World Health Organization, Monograph Series, 57 (Geneva, 1968), show that there is a synergy between malnutrition and infection whereby malnutrition aggravates infections which, in turn, increase the seriousness of malnutrition. Criticism of McKeown for not contemplating this synergy or physical effort: in Floud, Wachter and Gregory, Height, health and history; P. G. Lunn, ‘Nutrition, immunity and infection’, in Schofield, Reher and Bideau, The decline of mortality in Europe, 131–45; R. Floud, ‘Medicine and the decline of mortality: indicators of nutritional status’, in Schofield, Reher and Bideau, The decline of mortality in Europe, 146–57; Harris, ‘Public health’; R. W. Fogel, The escape from hunger and premature death, 1700–2100. Europe, America and the Third World (Cambridge, 2004); Floud, Fogel, Harris and Hong, Diet, health and work intensity; Floud, Fogel, Harris and Hong, The changing body.

21 On health transition: J. Bernabeu-Mestre, Enfermedad y población (Valencia, 1994).

22 Preston, Mortality patterns; S. H. Preston, ‘Causes and consequences of mortality decline in less developed countries during the twentieth century’, in R. A. Easterlin ed., Population and economic change in developing countries (Chicago, 1980), 289–360; Szreter, ‘The importance of social intervention’; Szreter, ‘Mortality and public health’; Szreter, Health and wealth; Mooney, The geography of mortality; Szreter and Mooney, ‘Urbanization, mortality’; Easterlin, ‘How beneficent is the market?’

23 S. Szreter, ‘A central role for local government? The example of late Victorian Britain’, History and Policy (May 2002), http://www.historyandpolicy.org/; Szreter, S., ‘The relationship between public health and social change’, American Journal of Public Health 92, 5 (2002), 722–5CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; Szreter, S., ‘Health, class, place, and politics: social capital and collective provision in Britain’, Contemporary British History 16 (2002), 27–57CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Szreter, Health and wealth. Also, Bell, F. and Millward, R., ‘Public health expenditures and mortality in England and Wales, 1870–1914’, Continuity and Change 13, 2 (1998), 221–50CrossRefGoogle Scholar; H. Fraser, ‘Municipal socialism and social policy’, in R. J. Morris and R. Rodger eds., The Victorian city (London, 1993), 258–80; B. Luckin, ‘The metropolitan and the municipal: the politics of health and environment in London, 1860–1920’, in S. Sheard and H. Power eds., Body and city: histories of urban public health. Historical urban studies (Aldershot, 2000), 46–67; B. Harris, The origins of the British welfare state. Society, state and social welfare in England and Wales, 1800–1945 (Basingstoke, 2004).

24 This is supported by figures indicative of an urban penalty, namely, the increase in life expectancy since the commencement of public health reform in the 1870s and statistical exercises which show a high correlation between the size of towns and/or population density and variables such as life expectancy, infant mortality or the virulence of diseases transmitted by air, water and food. See, for example, Kearns, ‘The urban penalty’; Woods and Woodward, Urban disease and mortality; Mooney, The geography of mortality; Szreter and Mooney, ‘Urbanization, mortality’; Woods, The demography of Victorian England and Wales.

25 These factors were: improvement in nutritional status, inoculation against smallpox, improvements in the construction of housing, and draining of marshlands. See Wrigley and Schofield, The population history of England; R. Schofield, ‘British population change, 1700–1871’, in R. Floud and D. McCloskey eds., The economic history of Britain since 1700. Vol. 1. 1700–1860 (Cambridge, 1994), 60–95; Razzell, ‘The conundrum of eighteenth-century’; Woods, The demography of Victorian England and Wales; Hamlim, Public health and social justice; Floud, Fogel, Harris and Hong, Diet, health and work intensity; Floud, Fogel, Harris and Hong, The changing body.

26 Harris, ‘Public health’; Fogel, The escape from hunger and premature death; Floud, Fogel, Harris and Hong, Diet, health and work intensity; Floud, Fogel, Harris and Hong, The changing body.

27 We use the term morbidity in the sense of the incidence of disease and more specifically in the sense of the proportion of people falling ill in one place for a given period of time in relation to the total population of that place.

28 J. Nadal, A. Escudero and A. Sánchez Picón, ‘Orto y ocaso de una potencia minera’, in J. Nadal ed., Atlas de la industrialización de España (1750–2000) (Barcelona, 2003), 108–31.

29 C. Millas Basallos, Saneamiento de las poblaciones (urbanas, rurales) y policía urbana (Madrid, 1913), 3–4 [own translation].

30 G. Gómez, Cómo se vive y cómo se muere en Bilbao (Bilbao, 1896), 12. The Carlist war referred to by the author broke out in 1873, when the First Republic was proclaimed in Spain, and ended in 1876 with the defeat of the Carlists who supported the establishment of a Catholic monarchy in Spain which would defend the charters or old laws of the Basque provinces.

31 ‘Memoria sobre Vizcaya de la Comisión de Reformas Sociales. 1893’, Reformas Sociales V (Madrid, 1985), 589Google Scholar [own translation].

32 Arturo Masoli, ‘Higiene minera’, Gaceta Minera y Comercial de Cartagena, 2 April 1883 [own translation].

33 A. Escudero, Minería e industrialización de Vizcaya (Barcelona, 1988).

34 M. A. Pérez de Perceval and A. Sánchez Picón, El plomo en la minería española del siglo XIX. Evolución del sector y panorama empresarial (Madrid, 2001); M. A. Pérez de Perceval, ‘Historia de la minería metálica murciana’, in M. A. Esteve and C. Martínez, Los recursos naturales de la región de Murcia. Un análisis interdisciplinar (Murcia, 2003), 297–322.

35 G. Caselli, ‘Transition sanitaire et structure par cause de la mortalité’, Annales de Demographie Historique (1989), 55–78; and E. Balaguer, R. Ballester, J. Bernabeu, A. Nolasco, E. Perdiguero and S. Perez, ‘La transición sanitaria española en el período 1879/1919’, in M. Livi Bacci ed., Modelos regionales de transición demográfica en España y Portugal (Alicante, 1991), 137–56.

36 Arbaiza, M., ‘Urbanización y condiciones de vida en Vizcaya (1877–1930): aproximación a las causas sociales de la mortalidad infantil y juvenil’, Historia Contemporánea 18 (1999), 209–51Google Scholar; Á. P. Martínez Soto, D. Navarro Ortiz and M. Á. Pérez de Perceval, La vida en la Sierra minera de Cartagena. Evolución demográfica de la diputación de El Beal, 1880–1970 (Murcia, 2004).

37 These percentages are taken from the Estadísticas Mineras y Metalúrgicas de España. These statistics have been published by the Ministerio de Fomento since 1861 and contain a wide range of information, including the number of miners by province and basin. They can be consulted online at http://www.igme.es/biblioteca/biblio_digital.htm

38 Population figures are from Manuel González Portilla ed., Bilbao en la formacion del País Vasco contemporáneo (economía, población y ciudad) (Bilbao, 1995), 203–5. The number of miners is taken from Estadísticas Mineras y Metalúrgicas de España (see note 37).

39 The figures for population and the numbers of miners are taken from Censo de Población de La Unión (1900).

40 Arbaiza, M., ‘Mortalidad y condiciones de vida de los trabajadores de la industria vizcaína del siglo XIX’, Revista de Historia Industrial 8 (1995), 65–96Google Scholar; Arbaiza, ‘Urbanización y condiciones de vida en Vizcaya’.

41 Martínez Soto, Navarro Ortiz and Pérez de Perceval, La vida en la sierra minera de Cartagena, 202; M. A. López-Morell and M. A. Pérez de Perceval, La Unión. Historia y vida de una ciudad minera (Seville, 2010), 144–5.

42 Szreter and Mooney, ‘Urbanization, mortality’.

43 Woods, ‘Urban–rural mortality differentials’.

44 Ibid.

45 Haines, ‘The urban mortality transition’.

46 Arbaiza, ‘Mortalidad y condiciones de vida de los trabajadores’; Arbaiza, ‘Urbanización y condiciones de vida en Vizcaya’; Castroviejo, Pedro María Pérez, ‘Niveles de bienestar de la población minera vizcaína factores que contribuyeron al descenso de la mortalidad, 1876–1936’, Revista de Demografía Histórica 23, 1 (2005), 71–105Google Scholar.

47 López Morell and Pérez de Perceval, La Unión, 146.

48 Martínez Soto, Navarro Ortiz and Pérez de Perceval, La vida en la sierra minera de Cartagena, 202; López Morell and Pérez de Perceval, La Unión, 144–5.

49 Variation in human stature is regarded as an indicator of the nutritional status and the standard of living of historical populations (Horrell, S., Humphries, J. and Voth, H. J., ‘Stature and relative deprivation: female-headed households in the industrial revolution’, Continuity and Change 13, 1 (1998), 73–115CrossRefGoogle Scholar). However, children employed in British coal mining, although well fed and possessing a robust physical development, were shorter than their working-class contemporaries. Kirby suggests that the short stature of coal-mining children was linked to occupational selection for height together with other, discrete, environmental factors. He concludes that historical records of human stature may have been affected by occupational influences unconnected with conventionally defined measures of welfare (Kirby, P., ‘Causes of short stature among coalmining children, 1823–1850’, Economic History Review 48, 4 (1995), 687–99Google Scholar).

50 Escudero, A. and Castroviejo, P. M. Pérez, ‘The living standard of miners in Biscay (1876–1936): wages, the human development index and height’, Revista de Historia Económica. Journal of Iberian and Latin American Economic History 28, 3 (2010), 503–35CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

51 Arbaiza, M., ‘Movimientos migratorios y economías familiares en el norte de España (1877–1910)’, Boletín de la Asociación de Demografía Histórica 12–13 (1994), 93–194Google Scholar.

52 Information on the diet of mining families is taken from Castroviejo, P. M. Pérez, ‘Consumo, dieta y nutrición de grupos populares. La alimentación durante la industrialización de Vizcaya’, Zainak 20 (2000), 211–26Google Scholar.

53 G. Quiroga, ‘Estatura y condiciones de vida en el mundo rural español, 1893–1954’, in J. M. Martínez-Carrión ed., El nivel de vida en la España rural, siglos XVIII–XX (Alicante, 2002), 461–95.

54 Pérez Castroviejo,‘Consumo, dieta y nutrición’.

55 The 9-hour day was achieved following the strike of 1890 and the Sunday rest law was promulgated in 1903.

56 A. P. Martínez Soto, ‘Salarios y niveles de vida en las zonas mineras de Murcia, 1874–1935’, paper presented at the VIII Congreso de la Asociación Española de Historia Económica (Santiago de Compostela, 2005).

57 M. A. Pérez de Perceval, A. P. Martínez Soto and A. Sánchez Picón, ‘El trabajo de menores en la minería española: 1860–1940’, in J. M. Borrás ed., Tres siglos de trabajo infantil en España (Barcelona, 2013), 153–91.

58 Pérez de Perceval, Martínez Soto and Sánchez Picón, ‘El trabajo de menores’.

59 This series has not yet been published. It was compiled by Ángel Pascual Martínez Soto and Miguel Ángel Pérez de Perceval.

60 Escudero and Pérez Castroviejo, ‘The living standard of miners in Biscay’.

61 J. Maluquer, ‘Consumo y precios’, in A. Carreras and X. Tafunell eds., Estadísticas históricas de España, siglos XIX y XX. Fundación BBVA (Bilbao, 2005), 1247–97.

62 Cusso, X. and Garrabou, R., ‘La transición nutricional en la España contemporánea: las variaciones en el consumo de pan, patatas y legumbres (1850–2000)’, Investigaciones de Historia Económica 7 (2007), 69–100CrossRefGoogle Scholar; X. Cusso and R. Garrabou, ‘La transición nutricional moderna en la España urbana 1880–1940’, paper presented at the conference Health and Cities in Spain, 1880–1940 (Barcelona, 2010).

63 In the 1830s, the government commissioned Edwin Chadwick, leader of the Health of Towns Association, to issue a report on the healthiness of the popular districts which was used in 1848 for the enactment of the Public Health Act and the General Board of Health was created. The activities of this body were boycotted until the 1870s by pressure groups which we will refer to later.

64 On public health reform in Great Britain, see Rosen, A history of public health; Fraser, ‘Municipal socialism and social policy’; Bell and Millward, ‘Public health expenditures and mortality’; Szreter, ‘The importance of social intervention’; Szreter, ‘A central role for local government?’; Szreter, Health and wealth; Harris, ‘Public health’; Luckin, ‘The metropolitan and the municipal’; and Floud, Fogel, Harris and Hong, Diet, health and work intensity; Floud, Fogel, Harris and Hong, The changing body.

65 E. Perdiguero Gil, ‘Problemas de salud e higiene en el ámbito local’, in J. Bernabeu-Mestre, J. X. Espluges and E. Robles eds., Higiene i salubritat en els municips valencians (Benissa, 1997), 17–45; S. Salort, La Hacienda local en la España contemporánea. La Hacienda municipal de Alacant (1800–1923) (Alicante, 1998).

66 In 1874 the king Alfonso XII was restored to the throne after a coup d’état. During the Restoration period (1874–1923), two parties took turns in power: the Liberal-Conservative Party, founded by Antonio Cánovas del Castillo and the Liberal Fusionist Party, founded by Práxedes Mateo Sagasta.

67 In 1890, Mateo Sagasta established universal male suffrage, but between this year and 1923, the two parties pacifically took turns at holding power, obtaining wide parliamentary majorities through procedures that essentially corrupted the suffrage. Some historians have characterised this political system of the Restoration as ‘oligarchic liberalism’.

68 J. J. García Gómez, El nivel de vida de los trabajadores de Alcoy, 1836–1936 (unpublished D.Phil. thesis, University of Alicante, 2013), section 2.8 (‘Urban penalty and sanitary reform in Alcoy’).