Who put bread on the table in the Spain of 1924? Work and family economics of day labourers and fishermen in Catalonia and Galicia

Data on wages and living standards in Spain suggest that at least until the 1920s male wages were insufficient to cover the economic needs of families. We also know that female labour participation rates were very high. The question, still unresolved, is whether these were due to employment opportunities or the inadequacy of male wages. The scarcity of data is one of the reasons for the persistence of this debate: wages series are not disaggregated by gender in the long term, there are discontinuities in wages data, and there are few family budgets available. Based on an analysis of the Municipal Population Census of 1924, this article provides new evidence related to female activity rates, the contribution of all household members to family income, and the expenses of working families in two regions with very different models of economic development: Catalonia and Galicia.