Average stature reflects cumulative net nutrition and health during economic development. This study introduces a difference-in-decompositions approach to show that although 19th century African-American cumulative net nutrition was comparable to working class whites, it was made worse-off with the transition to free-labor. Average stature reflects net nutrition over the life-course, and adult blacks born under bound-labor had greater age related statures loss than blacks under free-labor. Agricultural worker's net nutrition was better than workers in other occupations and was better-off under free-labor and industrialization. Within-group stature variation was greater than across-group variation, and white within-group stature variation associated with socioeconomic status was greater than African-Americans.

This study examines the expected retirement replacement rates (RRs) of several cohorts of Dutch employees at the time of their planned retirements. It also computes RRs based on the available pension records. We find that the expected replacement rate (E(RR)) is, in general, higher than the ones we compute. Larger discrepancies are found for younger cohorts and for individuals with less education and working experience. We also examine the difference between the expected and computed RRs and find that the mismatch is mostly related to poor institutional knowledge. We also show the role of assumptions about institutions and wage profiles in determining our results.