A Chat with Melissa Dell on the Persistent Effect of Peru’s Mining Mita

GrowthChat is a podcast on the social and cultural journey of humankind, hosted by Marco Lecci and Sascha O. Becker.  In this episode we chat with Melissa Dell  about her paper "The Persistent Effect of Peru’s Mining Mita”. Melissa examines the long-run impacts of the Mita, an extensive forced mining labor system in effect in Peru and Bolivia between 1573 and 1812. She finds that a Mita effect lowers household consumption by around 25% and increases the prevalence of stunted growth in children by around 6 percentage points in subjected districts today.