Consumption Baskets and Cost of Living in Southern Late Colonial Brazil. Rio Grande, 1772-1823

DJENDEREDJIAN, JULIO / MARTIREN, JUAN LUIS

Revista de Historia Económica - Journal of Iberian and Latin American Economic History

Cambridge

Lugar: Madrid; Año: 2020 vol. 38 p. 279 - 310

0212-6109

This paper examines the cost ofliving and evolution of welfare ratios among urban workers Rio Grande?s vila, the main commercial enclave of thesouthern Portuguese dominions in America. From diverse sources (military andhospital expenditure accounts, merchant credit bills from probate inventories)we build different consumption basketsto calculate their cost in sevenbenchmark years: 1772, 1792, 1802, 1809, 1816, 1819 and 1823. The evolution of costofliving evidences a consistent upward trend during the period, which, however,does not substantially affect welfare ratios. Also, in order to build regionalcomparisons, we follow Allen?s methodology (2001) to estimate welfare ratios ofskilled and unskilled workers in Rio Grande, Buenos Aires and Montevideo. Theresults of using this approachcould be useful to adjust the methodology for furthercomparisons.