Subjective well-being and inequality in Spain’s decline

Carlos Álvarez-Nogal and Leandro Prados de la Escosura ()
Additional contact information
Carlos Álvarez-Nogal: Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Getafe, Madrid, Spain

Cliometrica, Journal of Historical Economics and Econometric History, 2025, vol. 19, issue 1, 1-27

Abstract: The economic decline of Early Modern Spain ofers an opportunity to explore how it afected perceptions of welfare and inequality. We provide an answer based on the Bull of the Crusade, an inexpensive alms collected by the Hispanic Monarchy and massively purchased by a highly religious population that believed in its spiritual benefts. The purchase of the bull represented a public practice of religion that captured people’s religiosity and belief in the afterlife and had a positive impact on their spiritual well-being. We fnd that our measure of spiritual well-being—the ratio of (normalized) bulls sold to their recipients (the population aged 12 and above)—deteriorated in the late 1570s and 1580s and the 1640s but improved during the 1670s, while subjective inequality—the ratio between the number of bulls sold to those who deemed themselves afuent and those sold to common individuals—increased from 1600–1640 and fell in the 1580s and early 1590s and the 1670s. Hence, improving (deteriorating) subjective well-being was accompanied by declining (improving) subjective inequality through the seventeenth century.

Keywords: Subjective; Well-being; ·; Subjective; Inequality; ·; Spain; ·; Decline (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H27 I31 N33 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11698-024-00288-1 (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to journal subscribers

Related works:
Journal Article: Subjective well-being and inequality in Spain’s decline (2025)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:afc:cliome:v:19:y:2025:i:1:p:1-27

Access Statistics for this article

Cliometrica, Journal of Historical Economics and Econometric History is currently edited by Claude Diebolt, Dora Costa and Jean-Luc Demeulemeester

More articles in Cliometrica, Journal of Historical Economics and Econometric History from Association Française de Cliométrie (AFC) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().