Breakdown and reform: the Chilean road to the creation of ministries of hygiene and social welfare 1892-1931.

Doctors have played an important role in the development of health institutions in Latin America. However, they are not the only profession that has had a voice in these matters. There are also other factors influencing the development of ministries of health.

Malnutrition Rates in Chile from the Nitrate Era to the 1990s.

Following Salvatore and the WHO, in this article, we provide the first long-term estimates of malnutrition rates for Chile per birth cohort, measured through stunting rates of adult males born from the 1870s to the 1990s. We used a large sample of military records, representative of the whole Chilean population, totalling over 38 thousand individuals. Our data suggest that stunting rates were very high for those born between the last three decades of the nineteenth century and the first two decades of the twentieth century.

Height of Male Prisoners in Santiago de Chile during the Nitrate Era: The Penalty of being Unskilled, Illiterate, Illegitimate and Mapuche.

This article contributes to the study of inequality in the biological welfare of Chile's adult population during the nitrate era, ca. 1880s-1930s, and in particular focuses on the impact of socioeconomic variables on height, making use of a sample of over 20,000 male inmates of the capital's main jail. It shows that inmates with a university degree were taller than the rest; that those born legitimate were taller in adulthood; that those (Chilean born) whose surnames were Northern European were also taller than the rest, and in particular than those with Mapuche background; and that those able to read and write were also taller than illiterate inmates.