Roberto Araya-Valenzuela

University of Santiago, Chile | USACH · Departamento de Economía

Analysis of a sample of around 4,600 women born between the 1860s and the 1990s finds that the height of adult females increased by about 5 cm, primarily from the 1860s to the 1880s and during the second half of the twentieth century—representing the greatest known improvement in women’s biological welfare in Chilean history. Chilean women have nev...

This article deals with the emergence of joint stock companies (JSC) in Chile during the third quarter of the nineteenth century. We have built the first database related to JSC for this period, providing useful information about its demography. We found that: JSC funded the emergence of new key industries fostering economic growth; there was a hig...

This article provides the first series for Chilean adult female height, for cohorts born from the 1860s to the 1990s, using a sample of around 4.600 women. The height of adult females increased by about 5 cm during this period, primarily during the 1860s-1880s and the second half of the twentieth century. This is the greatest improvement in women’s...

This article provides the first series of Chilean adult male height for the whole of the twentieth century. The height of adult males increased by about 5.5 cm during the twentieth century, primarily during the second half of this period. This is the greatest improvement in biological welfare in Chilean history; Chilean males have never been as tal...

We provide the first estimates of gender income and land inequality in Chile during the first decades after independence, when Chile was a predominantly agrarian society. We have used a new source: the records of the first agricultural censuses ever made for any Latin American republic. We found that there were over six times more male landowners t...

This article provides the first series of Chilean adult male height for the whole of the twentieth century. The height of adult males increased by about 5.5 cm during the twentieth century, primarily during the second half of this period. This is the greatest improvement in biological welfare in Chilean history; Chilean males have never been as tal...

A sample of over 44 thousand Chilean marines was used to estimate the trend of mean heights from the 1820s to the 1890s. We confirm that there was height stagnation in the last decades of the nineteenth-century Chile despite sizeable per capita GDP growth; there were hidden nutritional costs to this economic growth. This situation resembles a simil...

This article provides the first series of adult male height for nineteenth century Chile. Our aim was to assess the trends indicated by height during this period, but also the relationship between stature and both GDP per capita and exports. Having analysed our data, our primary conclusions are that: there was a reduction in heights for cohorts bor...

This article provides the first series of adult male height for 19 th -century Chile. Our aim was not only to assess the trends indicated by height during this period, but also the relationship between stature and both GDP per capita and exports. Having analysed our data, our primary conclusion is that there was a reduction in height for cohorts bo...

The average height of a population has been recently taken as a good indicator of biological welfare, and therefore of standards of living and economic development. This article provides the first available series for Chile, providing the evolution of the average height of Chilean soldiers (male) born from the 1730s to the 1980s, using a sample of...

This article assesses agricultural market income inequality by examining three untapped comprehensive agricultural censuses of all of Chile, undertaken in 1834, 1838 and 1852. Since there had been no Chilean income inequality measurements prior to 1860, this is a novel contribution. Given Chile's great dependence on the agricultural sector during t...

This article assesses the state of the agrarian sector and the composition of the Chilean agrarian elite during the first half of the nineteenth century, a rather unexplored period in Chile’s agrarian historiography. We have used several untapped sources such as the Catastro (agricultural census) and El Agricultor. From the former we have built and...