Welfare, Inequality and regionalities: the evolution of the wages between the golden ages and the twenties in Argentina (1900-1925)

EMILIANO SALAS ARÓN

Mendoza

Congreso; Congreso Argentino de Historia Economica; 2021

This paper reaches a relevant topic of the Argentinean and Latin American economic history, about the social externalities of the economic cycles in the export-led economies of the region during the First globalization and the post-first world war period (1870-1930). In this case, the essay presents a new estimation of the real wages in Argentina, at national and provincial levels, for 1904,1912 and 1925. The main sources of this work are the construction of urban nominal wages and a new data set on consumer prices, by using data from the National Labor Department Bulletins and the National and Provinces budgets.The data shows that during the first decade of the century, the wages grew in Argentina, but this process had a reversion during the first world war. The impact of the war was so high that the real wages in 1925, after an important improvement, still showed a similar level than in 1912. We argue that these trends signified a political problem to the incipient Argentinian democratic regime and can contribute to explain the social and political conflicts during the Yrigoyen presidency (1916-1922). The inequality between the skilled and unskilled wages did not show a high increase during the period.With this new estimation, we propose that the welfare levels in Argentina during this period of high economic growth show a high degree of regional inequality and disparities. On the provincial level, we argue that the wages followed the pattern of the income growth. In those provinces were the economy showed a GDP growth, the wages rose at a higher degree than those where the economy prevailed in the same level. In the 1904-1912, this tendency does not imply an increase in the regional inequality, because some of the more dynamic regional economies where in the interior of the country. In 1912-1925, the growth of the country seems to be more concentrate in the richest region of Argentina, and these resulted in an expansion of the income inequality at the regional level.