scholarly journals Rural Height Penalty or Socioeconomic Penalization? The Nutritional Inequality in Backward Spain

Author(s):  
Antonio M. Linares-Luján ◽  
Francisco M. Parejo-Moruno

This article studies the evolution of nutritional inequality, measured through the male adult height, in one of the poorest regions of Spain, in southwestern Europe: Extremadura. With a wide sample of statures of recruits born between 1855 and 1979, conscripted between 1876 and 2000, the research delves into the urban-rural height gap using coefficients of variation, tests of equality of means and proxy variables of a socioeconomic nature. The results of the analysis reveal that the strong anthropometric growth that Extremadura experienced since the last decades of the 19th century was accompanied by a less internal inequality. The lower heterogeneity did not eliminate, however, the urban-rural height gap during the period under study. In this sense, despite the absence of environmental differences between urban and rural areas in Extremadura, there was a clear rural height penalty in the region from the mid-19th century to the late 20th century. Rural punishment was fundamentally related to the greater presence of agrarian workers and the lower presence of wealthy families in villages and small towns. On the contrary, educational differences or differences in terms of nutritional health were not as decisive in the rural height penalization, at least when such differences are measured with the sources of military recruitment.

2019 ◽  
Vol 63 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 154-176
Author(s):  
Štěpánka Běhalová

The activities of the Landfras printing works and the associated publishing house are an important part of the history of book culture in the Czech lands in the 19th century and form a significant chapter in the history of book printing and publishing in this period. The focus of the production of the printing works and the publishing house reflected the new needs of literate broad social classes in the 19th century, showing increased interest in the printed word. The company used the modern methods and technologies available, which reduced the price of the final book or other printed materials. For publication, it selected titles whose sales were guaranteed or at least expected. The result was the repeated printing of a number of titles of religious, educational and entertainment literature, which had already been popular in previous centuries, and the development of contemporary titles for the general public from both urban and rural areas. For centuries, great popularity was mainly enjoyed by the titles of religious folk literature (Himmelschlüssel prayer books by the theologian Martin von Cochem and other prayer and devotional books), in which Baroque Catholic piety was reflected until the late 19th century. To the original Himmelschlüssel and other traditional titles, the printing works added titles of its regular authors and their translations of contemporary prayer and religious literature. It complemented the titles of secular entertainment literature (reprints of original works, e.g. Kronika o Štilfridovi [The Chronicle of Štilfríd] or Kronika sedmi mudrců [The Chronicle of the Seven Wise Men]) with translations and original works by Jan Hýbl and Václav Rodomil Kramerius, and it also printed moralising stories by local priests. Educational literature, such as guides for homesteaders, cooks and the like sold also well. A separate activity section comprises the publication and printing of textbooks mostly for local schools. Until the end of the 19th century, they were abundantly complemented by printed broadsides, affordable to every household. A significant chapter of the 19th century was the development of periodicals, which was mirrored in the second half of that century also in newly emerging regional titles, especially in the weekly Ohlas od Nežárky [Echoes from the River Nežárka], which began to be published in 1871.


2016 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 331-342
Author(s):  
Ivan Simic ◽  
Ratko Bajcetic

The development of settlements in Vojvodina is burdened by numerous problems, both environmental and social, which seriously jeopardize their path towards resilience. The effects of climate changes have been identified mostly in the form of floods, inundations and prolonged droughts affecting agriculture as the dominant activity in the region. On the other hand, settlements in Vojvodina, especially small towns and villages, suffer from chronic depopulation and the 'emptying' effect. Naturally, this transfers its consequences to major cities and the entire regional network of settlements. In this article we will focus on a particular type of settlement in Vojvodina - small towns, specific because of their urban-rural character and their significance within the above-mentioned issues. What are the possibilities for this type of settlement to improve its ecological resilience, a property that is the conditio sine qua non of sustainability? Our assumption is that small towns, due to their hybrid urban-rural character, possess sufficient flexibility and polyvalence to take on the role of the 'fluid object' i.e. the mediator that allows the proliferation of relational objects between urban and rural areas, and that will allow spatial resilience of the entire network of settlements. We will use the concept of spatial resilience in order to extend the question of ecological resilience of one type of settlement to the entire network of towns.


Author(s):  
Vanessa Carlow ◽  
Olaf Mumm ◽  
Dirk Neumann ◽  
Anne-Kathrin Schneider ◽  
Boris Schröder ◽  
...  

Many years, urbanisation research has largely focused the development of urban agglomerations and megacity regions, whereas less attention was paid on the development of medium-sized cities, small towns, villages, or rural areas. Yet many interrelations and spatial linkages between urban and rural areas exist. In this paper, we present a novel method called ‘TOPOI’ for the integrated analysis and description of settlement units in an urban–rural setting. The TOPOI-method enhances the understanding of the built environment by clustering and describing settlement units of similar characteristics with view to their physical form, function, and connectivity. The method is built on known planning parameters, but does not limit the analysis of settlement units to their administrative boundaries. Based on 11 indicators, 13 TOPOI-classes were identified in two exemplary study regions revealing new insights into urban–rural settlement types. This allows a better understanding of urban–rural linkages and therefore opens up new pathways for a more sustainable development.


2019 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
pp. 1-8
Author(s):  
Tristan Thielmann

<p><strong>Abstract.</strong> At the end of the 19th century, the bicycle was a medium used for land development, connection, sensing and routing. This article explores these features of the bicycle based on the League of American Wheelmen bulletins that were published between 1880 and 1902. The enquiry shows that the bicycle constitutes a rural geomedium since the first cyclists regarded themselves as land surveyors. Furthermore, the bicycle, as a vehicle that is connected to an individual, links the starting and end points of a route &amp;ndash; without stops on the way and without changing vehicles. This continuity of movement is a highly essential property of the medium ‘bicycle’. Being awheel and making the countryside accessible cartographically are therefore closely linked to each other; they take place in one and the same procedure as part of the joint practice of land surveys. During this process, the bicycle proves to be an ideal instrument for the sensing of road surface conditions and therefore functions as a mediator between the road and the cyclist. It also serves as a mediator between urban and rural areas and as a connected device: the bicycle is the condition for cooperation for Bicycle Clubs, which enjoyed enormous popularity at the end of the 19th century. It facilitated the cooperative experiencing and exploring of the land that had yet not been documented cartographically and, in turn, yielded its own new form of representation: navigable maps in the form of route guides.</p>


1982 ◽  
Vol 21 (4) ◽  
pp. 275-296 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rehana Siddiqui

The paper aims at testing the validity of Engel's law with data on Pakistan. Consumption functions for urban and rural areas have been estimated separately. These functions are shown to be determined by total expenditure and household size. Engel's law is confirmed for some commodity groups but not for all. Following tests of urban-rural homogeneity and of stability of urban and rural consumption functions, demand growth rates for different food and non-food items have been calculated, assuming different growth rates of total expenditure and household size.


Author(s):  
Jun Zhang ◽  
Xiaodie Yuan ◽  
Xueping Tan ◽  
Xue Zhang

As one of the most important methods for limiting urban sprawl, the accurate delineation of the urban–rural boundary not only promotes the intensive use of urban resources, but also helps to alleviate the urban issues caused by urban sprawl, realizing the intensive and healthy development of urban cities. Previous studies on delineating urban–rural boundaries were only based on the level of urban and rural development reflected by night-time light (NTL) data, ignoring the differences in the spatial development between urban and rural areas; so, the comprehensive consideration of NTL and point of interest (POI) data can help improve the accuracy of urban–rural boundary delineation. In this study, the NTL and POI data were fused using wavelet transform, and then the urban–rural boundary before and after data fusion was delineated by multiresolution segmentation. Finally, the delineation results were verified. The verification result shows that the accuracy of delineating the urban–rural boundary using only NTL data is 84.20%, and the Kappa value is 0.6549; the accuracy using the fusion of NTL and POI data on the basis of wavelet transform is 93.2%, and the Kappa value is 0.8132. Therefore, we concluded that the proposed method of using wavelet transform to fuse NTL and POI data considers the differences between urban and rural development, which significantly improves the accuracy of the delineation of urban–rural boundaries. Accurate delineation of urban–rural boundaries is helpful for optimizing internal spatial structure in both urban and rural areas, alleviating environmental problems resulting from urban development, assisting the formulation of development policies for urban and rural fringes, and promoting the intensive and healthy development of urban areas.


Land ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (11) ◽  
pp. 1228
Author(s):  
Zhiheng Yang ◽  
Nengneng Shen ◽  
Yanbo Qu ◽  
Bailin Zhang

Integrated development in urban and rural areas has led to a new form of urban–rural interdependence, which promotes rural territorial functional evolution and land use changes. Rural land use transition, showing the synchronous development between cities and villages, is an important window through which to observe integrated development in urban and rural areas. We focus on uncovering the association between rural land use transition and urban–rural integration development (URID), put forward a dynamic relationship assumption between rural land use transformation and URID stages based on the transmission mechanism of urban–rural linkages, and undertake empirical analysis using the panel regression model with the data of county-level administrative units in Shandong Province, China. The results show that rural land use transition has maintained a close association with URID, and that the changes in cultivated land, forest land, and surface-water area are highly related to URID. There are different leading urban–rural linkages in rural areas around big-sized cities, mid-sized cities, and small-sized cities, which determine whether rural areas are in different URID stages of high, medium, or low levels. Further, rural areas can take different actions to promote URID at different stages through strengthening or introducing urban–rural linkages driven by economies of scale and deepening urbanization. This provides a reference for developing countries to formulate rural land use policies on achieving the goal of URID.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shekhar Chauhan ◽  
Shobhit Srivast ◽  
Pradeep Kumar ◽  
Ratna Patel

Abstract Background: Multimorbidity is defined as the co-occurrence of two or more than two diseases in the same person. With rising longevity, multimorbidity has become a prominent concern among the older population. Evidence from both developed and developing countries shows that older people are at much higher risk of multimorbidity, however, urban-rural differential remained scarce. Therefore, this study examines urban-rural differential in multimorbidity among older adults by decomposing the risk factors of multimorbidity and identifying the covariates that contributed to the change in multimorbidity.Methods: The study utilized information from 31,464 older adults (rural-20,725 and urban-10,739) aged 60 years and above from the recent release of the Longitudinal Ageing Study in India (LASI) wave 1 data. Descriptive, bivariate, and multivariate decomposition analysis techniques were used.Results: Overall, significant urban-rural differences were found in the prevalence of multimorbidity among older adults (difference: 16.3; p<0.001). Moreover, obese/overweight and high-risk waist circumference were found to narrow the difference in the prevalence of multimorbidity among older adults between urban and rural areas by 8% and 9.1%, respectively.Conclusion: There is a need to substantially increase the public sector investment in healthcare to address the multimorbidity among older adults, more so in urban areas, without compromising the needs of older adults in rural areas.


2018 ◽  
pp. 67-86
Author(s):  
Luca Salvati ◽  
Ilaria Zambon

Being more sensitive to economic fluctuations, childbearing postponement increased during the second demographic transition and was accompanied by a moderate decline in the number of children per woman and the progressive rise of mother’s age at first birth. Under the hypothesis that recessions have a marked influence on population dynamics, the present study investigates spatial changes in mother’s age at birth in Greece with the aim to assess the differential impact of economic crisis along the urban-rural gradient. The percent composition of births by mother's age class – considered a gross indicator of fertility under a changing socioeconomic context – was studied at 4 spatial scales (the whole country, administrative regions, prefectures and metropolitan areas or specific economic districts) over an economic cycle from expansion to recession (1980–2016). While stimulating childbearing postponement observed since the early 1980s, empirical results of this study indicate that the 2007 recession was quite neutral on fertility trends in Greece, consolidating the traditional divide between urban and rural areas.


2020 ◽  
Vol 18 (4) ◽  
pp. 247-259
Author(s):  
Lech Jańczuk

There are “urban-rural municipalities” in Polish administration nomenclature. They are territorial units where urban and rural areas have one name and one local government. There are also urban and rural municipalities that have one name but different local governments. That neighborhood of municipalities in Polish may be described as “municipalities bagel”. The aim of this article was to investigate whether and to what extent the “municipalities bagel” cooperate (coordinate) the exercising public tasks on the economic level. The article attempts to verify the research hypothesis: in “municipalities bagel” there is a lack of coordination of the exercising public tasks”. The research method was a diagnostic survey in which the questionnaire was conducted. In December 2019, questionnaire forms were sent to all “municipalities bagel” in Poland. The results of the research indicated a lack of coordination in the performance of public tasks between “municipalities bagel”. The result is a reduction of the efficiency of performance of public duties in such municipalities. The “municipalities bagel” are functionally related areas. This link is characterized by the subordination of the interests of the rural municipality (especially economic). The development of bagel rural communes is determined by the development and cooperation with their urban counterparts.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document