Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-ndw9j Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-13T08:27:54.173Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Net nutrition on the late 19th and early 20th century American Great Plains: a robust biological response to the challenges to the Turner Hypothesis

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 February 2019

Scott Alan Carson
Scott Alan Carson*
Affiliation:
University of Texas, Permian Basin, Odessa, TX, USA and University of Münich and CESifo, Münich, Germany
*
*Corresponding author. Email: Carson_S@utpb.edu
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

In 1893, Frederick Jackson Turner proposed that America’s Western frontier was an economic ‘safety-valve’ – a place where settlers could migrate when conditions in eastern states and Europe crystallized against their upward economic mobility. However, recent studies suggest the Western frontier’s material conditions may not have been as advantageous as Jackson proposed because settlers lacked the knowledge and human capital to succeed on the Plains and Far Western frontier. Using stature, BMI and weight from five late 19th and early 20th century prisons, this study uses 61,276 observations for men between ages 15 and 79 to illustrate that current and cumulative net nutrition on the Great Plains did not deteriorate during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, indicating that recent challenges to the Turner Hypothesis are not well supported by net nutrition studies.

Keywords

Nineteenth century black and white stature variationUrbanizationUS Great Plains
Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Biosocial Science , Volume 51 , Issue 5 , September 2019 , pp. 698 - 719
Copyright
© Cambridge University Press, 2019. 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Aloia, J, Vaswani, A, Ma, R and Flaster, E (1997) Comparison of body composition in black and white premenopausal women. Journal of Laboratory Clinical Medicine 129(3), 294–299.Google Scholar
Atac, J and Bateman, F (1987) To Their Own Soil: Agriculture in the Antebellum North. Iowa University Press, Ames, IA.Google Scholar
Atack, J, Bateman, F and Parker, W (2000) The farm, the farmers, and the market. In Engerman S and Gallman R (eds) The Cambridge Economic History of the United States. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp. 245–284.Google Scholar
Barondess, D, Nelson, D and Schlaen, S (1997) Whole body bone, fat, lean muscle mass in black and white men. Journal of Bone and Mineral Research 12(6), 967–971.Google Scholar
Blinder, AS (1973) Wage discrimination: reduced form and structural estimates. Journal of Human Resources 8(4) 436–455.Google Scholar
Bodenhorn, H (2002) Mulatto advantage: the biological consequences of complexion in rural antebellum Virginia. Journal of Interdisciplinary History 33(1), 21–46.Google Scholar
Bodenhorn, H, Guinnane, T and Mroz, T (2014) Caveat lector: sample selection in historical heights and the interpretation of early industrializing economics. NBER Working Paper No. 19,955. URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w19955.pdf (accessed 2nd March 2018).Google Scholar
Bogart, D (2009) Nationalizations and the development of the transport systems: cross-country evidence and railroad networks, 1860–1912. Journal of Economic History 69(1), 202–237.Google Scholar
Burkhauser, RV and Cawley, J (2008) Beyond BMI: the value of more accurate measures of fatness and obesity in social science research. Journal of Health Economics 27(2), 519–529.Google Scholar
Carlino, G and Sill, K (2001) Regional income fluctuations: common trends and common cyclers. Review of Economics and Statistics 83(3), 446–456.Google Scholar
Carson, SA (2005) Chinese sojourn labor and the American transcontinental railroad: transaction costs, labor queuing and demand-side learning. Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics 161(1), 80–102.Google Scholar
Carson, SA (2008) The effect of geography and vitamin D on African-American stature in the 19th century: evidence from prison records. Journal of Economic History 68(3), 812–830.Google Scholar
Carson, SA (2009a) Geography, insolation and vitamin D in 19th century US African American and white statures. Explorations in Economic History 46(1), 149–159.Google Scholar
Carson, SA (2009b) Racial differences in body-mass indices of men imprisoned in 19th century Texas. Economics and Human Biology 7(1), 121–127.Google Scholar
Carson, SA (2010) Wealth, inequality, and insolation effects across the 19th century white US stature distribution. Journal HOMO – Journal of Comparative Human Biology 61(6), 467–478.Google Scholar
Carson, SA (2012a) Family size, the physical environment, and socioeconomic effects across the stature distribution. Journal HOMO – Journal of Comparative Human Biology 63(2), 136–147.Google Scholar
Carson, SA (2012b) Nineteenth century stature and family size: binding constraint or productive labor force? Review of Economics of the Household 10(1), 39–52.Google Scholar
Carson, SA (2012c) The body mass index of blacks and whites in the United States during the nineteenth century. Journal of Interdisciplinary History 42(3), 371–391.Google Scholar
Carson, SA (2013a) Biological conditions and economic development: westward expansion and health in late 19th and early 20th century Montana. Journal of Historical Society 13(1), 51–68.Google Scholar
Carson, SA (2013b) Body mass, wealth, and inequality in 19th century U.S. Joining the debate surrounding equality and health. Economics and Human Biology 11(1), 90–94.Google Scholar
Carson, SA (2015a) Biological conditions and economic development: 19th century US statures on the Great Plains. Human Nature 26(2), 123–142.Google Scholar
Carson, SA (2015b) Biology, complexion, and socioeconomic status: accounting for 19th century US BMIs by race. Australian Economic History Review 55(3), 238–255.Google Scholar
Carson, SA (2015c) A weighty issue: diminished 19th century net nutrition among the US working class. Demography 52(3), 945–966.Google Scholar
Carson, SA (2016) Body mass index through time: explanations, evidence, and future directions. In Komlos J and Kelly I (eds) Handbook of Economics and Human Biology. Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp. 133–151.Google Scholar
Carson, SA (2017) Health on the 19th century US Great Plains: opportunity or displacement? Journal of Interdisciplinary History 48(1), 21–41.Google Scholar
Carson, SA (2018a) The weight of 19th century Mexicans in the western United States. Historical Methods: A Journal of Quantitative and Interdisciplinary History 51(1), 1–12.Google Scholar
Carson, SA (2018b) Net nutrition and the transition from 19th century bound to free-labor: assessing dietary change with differences in decompositions. Journal of Demographic Economics 84(4), 447–475.Google Scholar
Carson, SA and Hodges, PE (2014) The relationship between body mass, wealth, and inequality across the BMI distribution: evidence from nineteenth century prison records. Mathematical Population Studies 21(2), 78–94.Google Scholar
Chernow, R (2017) Grant. Penguin Press, New York.Google Scholar
Cochrane, W (1979) The Development of American Agriculture. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis.Google Scholar
Coclanis, P and Komlos, J (1995) Nutrition and economic development in post-reconstruction South Carolina. Social Science History 19(1), 91–115.Google Scholar
Coelho, P and McGuire, R (2000) Diets versus diseases: the anthropometrics of slave children. Journal of Economic History 60(1), 232–246.Google Scholar
Costa, D (1993) Height, weight, wartime stress, and older age mortality. Explorations in Economic History 30(4), 424–449.Google Scholar
Craig, L, Goodwin, B and Grennes, T (2004) The effect of mechanical refrigeration on nutrition in the US. Social Science History 28(2), 325–337.Google Scholar
Cuff, T (2005) The Hidden Cost of Economic Development: the Biological Standard of Living in Antebellum Pennsylvania. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.Google Scholar
Davidson, J, Rose, J, Gutman, M, Haines, M, Condron, K and Condran, C (2002) The quality of African-American life in the Old Southwest near the turn of the 20th century. In Steckel R and Rose J (eds) The Backbone of History: Health and Nutrition in the Western Hemisphere. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp. 226–280.Google Scholar
Dimitri, C, Effland, A and Conklin, N (2005) The 20th century transformation of US agriculture and farm policy. United States Department of Agriculture 3, 1–17.Google Scholar
Dirks, R (2016 ) Food in the Gilded Age: What Ordinary Americans Ate. Rowman and Littlefield, Lanham, MD.Google Scholar
Easterlin, R (1971) Regional income trends, 1840–1950. In Fogel R and Engermann S (eds) The Reinterpretation of American Economic History. Harper and Row, New York, pp. 25–37.Google Scholar
Ellis, J (2004) His Excellency George Washington. Knopf, New York.Google Scholar
Eveleth, PB and Tanner, JM (1966) Worldwide Variation in Human Growth. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.Google Scholar
Federico, G (2013) The economic history of agriculture. In Whaples R and Parker R (eds) Routledge Handbook of Modern Economic History. Routledge University Press, New York, pp. 156–166.Google Scholar
Ferrie, JP and Troesken, W (2008) Water and Chicago’s mortality transition, 1850–1925. Explorations in Economic History 45(1), 1–16.Google Scholar
Flegal, K, Carroll, M and Ogden, C (2010) Prevalence and trends in obesity among US adults. Journal of the American Medical Association 303(3), 235–241.Google Scholar
Floud, R, Fogel, R, Harris, B and Hong, SC (2011) The Changing Body: Health, Nutrition, and Human Development. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.Google Scholar
Fogel, R (1994) Economic growth, population theory, and physiology: the bearing of long-term processes on the making of economic policy. American Economic Review 84(3), 369–395.Google Scholar
Freeman, RB (1999) The economics of crime. In Ashenfelter O and Card D (eds) Handbook of Labor Economics, Vol. 3c.: North Holland, Amsterdam, Netherlands, Publisher’s Chapter 52, pp. 3529–3571.Google Scholar
Gluckman, P, Hanson, M and Beedle, A (2006) Early life events and their consequences for later disease: a life and history and evolutionary perspective. American Journal of Human Biology 19(1), 1–19.Google Scholar
Gottfredson, M and Hirshchi, T (1990) The General Theory of Crime. Stanford University Press, Stanford.Google Scholar
Griliches, Z (1971) Hybrid corn and the economics of innovation. In Fogel R and Engerman S (eds) The Reinterpretation of American Economic History. Harper and Row, New York, pp. 207–213.Google Scholar
Haines, M (2004) Growing incomes, shrinking people – can economic development be hazardous to your health? Social Science History 28(2), 251–252.Google Scholar
Haines, M, Craig, L and Weiss, T (2003) The short and the dead: nutrition, mortality, and the “antebellum puzzle” in the United States. Journal of Economic History 63(2), 382–413.Google Scholar
Hansen, Z and Libecap, G (2004) Small farms, externalities, and the dust bowl of the 1930s. Journal of Political Economy 112(3), 665–694.Google Scholar
Hilliard, SB (1972) Hog, Meat and Hoecake: Food Supply in the Old South, 1840–1860. Southern Illinois University Press, Carbondale, IL.Google Scholar
Hirshchi, T and Gottfredson, M (1983) Age and the explanation of crime. American Sociological Review 89(3), 552–584.Google Scholar
Jee, H, Jee, JW, Sull, PJ, Lee, SY, Ohrr, H, Guallar, E and Samet, J (2006) Body-mass index and mortality in Korean men and women. New England Journal of Medicine 355(8), 779–787.Google Scholar
Koch, D (2011) Waaler revisited: the anthropometrics of mortality. Economics and Human Biology 9(1), 106–117.Google Scholar
Koepke, N and Baten, J (2005) The biological standard of living in Europe during the last two millennia. European Review of Economic History 9(1), 61–95.Google Scholar
Koepke, N (2016) Global perspective on economics and biology. In Komlos J and Kelly I (eds) Oxford Handbook of Economics and Human Biology. Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp. 70–108.Google Scholar
Komlos, J (1987) The height and weight of West Point cadets: dietary change in antebellum America. Journal of Economic History 47(4), 897–927.Google Scholar
Komlos, J Clarifications of a puzzle: the decline in nutritional status at the onset of modern economic growth in the U.S.A. Journal of Economic History (Forthcoming).Google Scholar
Komlos, J and A’Hearn, B (2016) The decline in the nutritional status of the US antebellum population at the onset of modern economic growth. NBER Working Paper No. 21845.Google Scholar
Komlos, J and A’Hearn, B Shrinking in a growing economy is not so puzzling after all. Economics and Human Biology (Forthcoming).Google Scholar
Komlos, J and Carson, S (2017) The BMI values of the lower classes likely declined during the Great Depression. Economics and Human Biology 26 (supplement), 137–143.Google Scholar
Lebergott, S (1984) The Americans: An Economic Record. W. W. Norton, New York.Google Scholar
Libcap, G and Hansen, Z (2002) Rain follows the plow and dry farm doctrine: the climate information problem and homestead failure in the upper Great Plains, 1890–1925. Journal of Economic History 62(1), 86–120.Google Scholar
McGuire, R and Coelho, P (2011 ) Parasites, Pathogens, and Progress: Diseases, and Economic Development. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.Google Scholar
Mifflin, M St Jeor, S, Hill, L, Scott, B, Daugherty, S and Koh, Y (1990) A new predictive equation for resting energy expenditure in healthy individuals. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 51, 241–247.Google Scholar
Nicholas, S and Oxley, D (1993) The living standards of women during the Industrial Revolution, 1795–1820. Economic History Review 46(94), 723–749.Google Scholar
Oaxaca, RL (1973) Male female wage differentials in urban labor markets. International Economic Review 14(3), 693–709.Google Scholar
Olmstead, A and Rhode, P (2006) Farmer, number, population, land, and value of property: 1850–1870. Tables Da 14-27. In Carter S et al. (eds) Historical Statistics on the United States, Earliest Times to the Present: Millennial Edition. Cambridge University Press, New York.Google Scholar
Olmstead, A and Rhode, P (2008) Biological innovation and productivity growth in the antebellum cotton economy. Journal of Economic History 68(4), 1123–1171.Google Scholar
Prince, J and Steckel, R (2003) Nutritional success on the Great Plains: nineteenth century equestrian nomads. Journal of Interdisciplinary History 33(3), 353–384.Google Scholar
Rosenbloom, J (2002 ) Looking for Work, Searching for Workers: American Labor Markets during Industrialization. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.Google Scholar
Ruggles, S, Flood, S, Goeken, R, Grover, J, Meyer, E, Pacas, J and Sobek, M (2018) IPUMS USA: Version 8.0 [dataset]. Minneapolis, MN: IPUMS, 2018. https://doi.org/10.18128/D010.V8.0Google Scholar
Schneider, E (2017) Children’s growth in an adaptive framework: explaining the growth patterns of American slaves and other historical populations. Economic History Review 70(1), 3–29.Google Scholar
Schutte, JE, Townsent, EJ, Hugg, J, Malina, RM and Blomquist, CG (1984) Density of lean body mass is greater in Blacks than in Whites. Journal of Applied Physiology 56(6), 1647–1649.Google Scholar
Senning, J, Danenhower, W, Jennings, H and Buckner, M (1914) The Know-Nothing movement in Illinois, 1854–1856. Journal of the Illinois Historical Society 7(1), 7–33.Google Scholar
Sokoloff, K and Villaflor, G (1982) Early achievement of modern stature in America. Social Science History 6(4), 453–481.Google Scholar
Steckel, R (1979) Slave height profiles from coastwise manifests. Explorations in Economic History 16(4), 363–380.Google Scholar
Steckel, R (1983a) Height and per capita income. Historical Methods: A Journal of Quantitative and Interdisciplinary History 16(1), 1–16.Google Scholar
Steckel, R (1983b) The economic foundations of east–west migration during the 19th century. Explorations of Economic History 20(1), 14–36.Google Scholar
Steckel, R (2000) Diets versus diseases in the anthropometrics of slave children: a reply. Journal of Economic History 60(1), 247–259.Google Scholar
Steckel, R and Prince, J (2001) Tallest in the world: Native Americans of the Great Plains in the nineteenth century. American Economic Review 91(1), 287–294.Google Scholar
Steckel, R and Rose, J (2002) Patterns of health in the Western Hemisphere. In Steckel R and Rose J (eds) The Backbone of History: Health and Nutrition in the Western Hemisphere. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp. 563–582.Google Scholar
Tanner, J (1977) Human growth and constitution. In Harrison G et al. (eds) Human Biology: An Introduction to Human Evolution, Variation, Growth and Ecology. Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp. 301–388 Google Scholar
Taylor, G (1962) The Transportation Revolution. Appendix A Tables 2 and 3. Holt Rinehart, New York.Google Scholar
Turner, F (1893) The frontier in American history. Proceedings of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin.Google Scholar
Turner, F (1920) The Frontier in American History. Henry Holt and Company, New York.Google Scholar
US Bureau of the Census (1975) Historical Statistics of the United States. Series, E123-E134, Table 6.1. Government Printing Office, Washington DC.Google Scholar
Waaler, HT (1984) Height, weight, and mortality: the Norwegian experience. Acta Medica Scandinavica, Supplement 679.Google Scholar
Wagner, DR and Heyward, VH (2000) Measures of body composition in blacks and white: a comparative review. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 71(6), 1392–1402.Google Scholar
Wilson, J (1975) Thinking about Crime. Basic Books, New York.Google Scholar
Zehetmayer, M (2011) The continuation of the antebellum puzzle: stature in the US, 1847–1894. European Review of Economic History 15(2), 313–327.Google Scholar
Zehetmayer, M (2013) Health, market integration, and the urban height penalty in the US, 1847–1894. Cliometrica 7(2), 161–187.Google Scholar
Zimran, A (2017) Does Sample-Selection Bias Explain the Industrialization Puzzle? Evidence from Military Enlistment in the Nineteenth-century United States. URL: http://aez.econ.northwestern.edu/zimran_height_selection.pdf Google Scholar