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Standards of the Present for People of the Past: Height, Weight, and Mortality among Men of Amherst College, 1834–1949

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 July 2012

John E. Murray
John E. Murray
Affiliation:
Assistant Professor of Economics, University of Toledo, Toledo, Ohio 43606-3390
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Abstract

Whether anthropometric-mortality risk relationships as found in present day populations also characterized past populations is disputed. This article finds U-shaped body mass index (BMI)-mortality risk relationships among nineteenth-century men that were similar to such relationships as found in twentieth-century men. No relationship between height and mortality could be detected. This article infers from the socioeconomic homogeneity of the sample that the BMI-mortality risk relationship, although apparently invariant with respect to time, is driven by noneconomic factors.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 57 , Issue 3 , September 1997 , pp. 585 - 606
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1997

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