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Clarifications of a Puzzle: The Decline in Nutritional Status at the Onset of Modern Economic Growth in the United States

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 November 2019

John Komlos  and
Brian A'Hearn
John Komlos
Affiliation:
John Komlos is Professor Emeritus, Department of Economics, Ludwig-Maximilians University, Ludwigstrasse 33/IV, Munich D-80539. E-mail: john.komlos@gmx.de.
Brian A'Hearn
Affiliation:
Brian A'Hearn is Fellow and Tutor in Economics, Pembroke College, Oxford OX1 1DW, United Kingdom. E-mail: brian.ahearn@pmb.ox.ac.uk.
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Abstract

Bodenhom, Guinnane, and Mroz (2017) are critical of anthropometric research using based on non-random samples. Declining height trends in military and prison data, they argue, are artifacts of negative selection during favorable labor market conditions. We study height trends in the United States in the antebellum decades, which coincided with the onset of modem economic growth. We find that neither the historical evidence nor their own statistical analysis support their views. The decline in physical stature in the decades before the Civil War was real, as Zimran (2019) has also shown.

Type
Article
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 79 , Issue 4 , December 2019 , pp. 1129 - 1153
Copyright
© The Economic History Association 2019 

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Footnotes

We appreciate suggestions pertaining to real wages during the Civil War from Frank Lewis of Queens University and Robert Margo of Boston University. Tim Guinnane and Tom Mroz kindly shared with us simulation code used in an earlier, working paper version of the article. Helpful comments by three anonymous referees are also gratefully acknowledged.

References

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