¹ Weld, Theodore D., American Slavery as It is: Testimony of a Thousand Witnesses (New York, 1839), pp. 27–35.Google Scholar

² Fogel, Robert William and Engerman, Stanley L., Time on the Cross: The Economics of American Negro Slavery, 2 vols. (Boston, 1974).Google Scholar

³ Sutch, Richard, “The Treatment Received by American Slaves: A Critical Review of the Evidence Presented in “Time on the Cross,” Explorations in Economic History, 12 (10 1975), pp. 335–438;Google ScholarSutch, Richard, “The Care and Feeding of Slaves,” in David, Paul A., Gutman, Herbert G., Sutch, Richard, Temin, Peter, and Wright, Gavin, eds., Reckoning with Slavery (New York, 1976), pp. 231–301.Google Scholar

⁴ Kiple, Kenneth F. and Kiple, Virginia H., “Slave Child Mortality: Some Nutritional Answers to a Perennial Puzzle,” Journal of Social History, 10 (Spring 1977), pp. 284–309.Google Scholar Other recent discussions of the diet can be found in Owens, Leslie Howard, This Species of Property: Slave Life and Culture in the Old South (New York, 1976), pp. 50–69;Google Scholar and Savitt, Todd L., Medicine and Slavery: The Diseases and Health Care of Blacks in Antebellum Virginia (Urbana, 1978), pp. 86–98.Google Scholar

⁵ The early works involving heights and economic history emphasize methodology. See Steckel, Richard H., “Slave Height Profiles from Coastwise Manifests,” Explorations in Economic History, 16 (10 1979), pp. 363–80;Google ScholarSandberg, Lars G. and Steckel, Richard H., “Soldier, Soldier, What Made You Grow So Tall? A Study of Height, Health, and Nutrition in Sweden, 1720–1881,” Economy and History, 23 (1980), pp. 91–105;Google Scholar and Fogel, Robert W. et al. , “Secular Changes in American and British Stature and Nutrition,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 14 (Autumn 1983), pp. 445–81.Google ScholarSteckel, Richard H., “Height and Per Capita Income,” Historical Methods, 15 (Winter 1982), pp. 1–7 discusses heights and other measures of living standards.Google Scholar

⁶ Steckel, “Slave Height Profiles,” Margo, Robert A. and Steckel, Richard H., “The Heights of American Slaves: New Evidence on Slave Nutrition and Health,” Social Science History, 6 (Fall 1982), pp. 516–38. The disappearance method of estimating food consumption tells us little about age patterns of health.Google Scholar

⁷ Wesley, Charles H., “Manifests of Slave Shipments Along the Waterways, 1808–1864,” Journal of Negro History, 27 (04 1942), pp. 155–74.Google Scholar

⁸ The data are housed in Record Group 36 of the National Archives and include 1,442 manifests and 16,099 slaves discussed in Steckel, “Slave Height Profiles,” plus all the manifests lodged under the port of Savannah. The slaves in this collection originated primarily from Baltimore (5.5 percent), Charleston (33.2 percent), Jacksonville (3.0 percent), Mobile (6.8 percent), New Orleans (4.4 percent), Norfolk (3.7 percent), Richmond (2.1 percent), and Savannah (26.8 percent).Google Scholar

⁹ The raw data are published in Margo and Steckel, “The Heights of American Slaves,” p. 518 (ages 8 and above), and in centimeters (ages 4 and above) in Steckel, Richard H., “Depression and Recovery: The Remarkable Case of American Slaves,” Annals of Human Biology (forthcoming).Google Scholar

¹⁰ Research on mathematical methods of description and analysis of the growth curve extends back to efforts by Quetelet in the early nineteenth century; see Tanner, James M., A History of the Study of Human Growth (Cambridge, 1981), pp. 130–36. The goals of this work have been mathematical parsimony—that is, the capacity to summarize large amounts of growth data using few parameters—and to discover functional forms whose parameters have a clear meaning. However, the complexity of the shape of the growth curve has frustrated many approaches, and until recently efforts concentrated on portions of the curve. Preece and Baines propose and estimate a family of functions that describe the whole growth curve, and which satisfy the constraints of fitting better than previous models and have no more than 5 or 6 parameters. Ultimately they recommend “Model 1” on the basis of robustness and simplicity.Google Scholar See Preece, M. A. and Baines, M. J., “A New Family of Mathematical Models Describing the Human Growth Curve,” Annals of Human Biology, 5 (01 1978), pp. 1–24. R. L. Mirwald kindly furnished the computer program used for estimation.Google Scholar

¹¹ Many examples are given in Eveleth, Phyllis B. and Tanner, James M., Worldwide Variation in Human Growth (New York, 1976).Google Scholar

¹² Eveleth and Tanner, Worldwide Variation, p. 165.Google Scholar

¹³ The age for girls is similar to that reported from a smaller data set and a different procedure in Steckel, “Slave Height Profiles,”Google Scholar of 13.34 years and in Trussell, James and Steckel, Richard, “The Age of Slaves at Menarche and Their First Birth,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 8 (Winter 1978), pp. 477–505, of 13.20 years.Google Scholar The age for boys is about 1 year less than reported in Steckel, “Slave Height Profiles.”Google Scholar

¹⁴ Trussell and Steckel, “The Age of Slaves,” pp. 498–501.Google Scholar

¹⁵ Ages at first birth and other aspects of slave fertility are discussed in Steckel, Richard H., “The Fertility of American Slaves,” Research in Economic History, 7 (1982), pp. 239–86Google Scholar and in Steckel, Richard H., The Economics of U.S. Slave and Southern White Fertility (New York, 1985).Google Scholar

¹⁶ Comparisons involving Asians versus Europeans and Africans should be made cautiously because of the possible role of genetic factors. This point and references to the literature are discussed in Steckel, Richard H., “Birth Weights and Infant Mortality Among American Slaves,” Explorations in Economic History, 23 (04 1986), fn. 2.Google Scholar

¹⁷ Additional comparisons with poor populations are available in Steckel, “Birth Weights,” table 3.Google Scholar

¹⁸ For purposes of this analysis it is desirable to have measurements throughout the growing years. However, studies generally focused on an age block within the growing years, and the youngest and the oldest ages within the block were used for the regression. Studies lacking measurements below age 9 or above age 15 were ignored. Similar results were obtained using a simple linear functional form. The regression includes only those populations that attained no more than 98 percent of modem height standards as children. The modern standards are from Tanner, J. M., Whithouse, R. H., and Takaishi, M., “Standards from Birth to Maturity for Height, Weight, Height Velocity, and Weight Velocity: British Children, 1965, Part II,” Archives of Disease in Childhood, 41 (12 1966), pp. 613–35.Google Scholar

¹⁹ The raw data were smoothed using the Preece-Baines Model 1. Steckel, “Growth Depression and Recovery,” gives the estimated heights. The results for the school studies should be viewed cautiously because sample sizes tended to diminish beyond age 15. A selective process of retention may have operated at the older ages. If wealthier families sought relatively more education for their children, for example, then catch-up growth may be exaggerated. The heights tended to increase overtime, yet there was considerable variation within a time period. The differences by social class within central Europe during the late 1700s, and within England, Italy, Russia, and the United States may reflect the distribution of income or living standards within these populations. Overall the American populations generally did well whereas the slave populations of the Caribbean, factory workers in England, the lower class of Italy, and the German peasants did poorly. Research that may explain these patterns of growth and other height data in terms of causal factors such as income, disease, diet, work effort, and other phenomena is at an early stage of development. The height data will be most useful when assembled to confront specific hypotheses about differences and time profiles in living standards.Google Scholar

²⁰ Point estimates of the ages at which velocity peaked were 14.3 and 12.4 years for males and females, respectively, in St. Lucia, and 15.0 and 13.5 years among males and females, respectively, in Trinidad. With the exception of St. Lucia females, these values are close to those estimated for slaves in the United States. The value for St. Lucia females is about one year below the value for the United States, yet postadolescent catch-up growth was much less for the Caribbean slaves. A poorer diet, heavier postadolescent work requirements, more infections, and especially alcohol consumption by Caribbean slaves during pregnancy may have contributed to the contrast in growth patterns. Tanner notes that in modern data marked stunting with only a minor degree of delay is associated with pathology before age 1, the classic case being pathology of the placenta caused by consumption of toxic substances; see Tanner, J. M., “The Potential of Auxological Data for Monitoring Economic and Social Well-Being,” Social Science History, 6 (Fall 1982), p. 576.Google Scholar Alcohol consumption by Caribbean slaves is discussed in Higman, Barry W., Slave Populations of the British Caribbean, 1807–1834 (Baltimore, 1984), p. 205;Google Scholar and McCusker, John James Jr, “The Rum Trade and the Balance of Payments of the Thirteen Continental Colonies, 1650–1775” (Ph.D. diss., University of Pittsburgh, 1970). In contrast, Crawford finds from interviews with ex-slaves that fewer than 10 percent of slaves in the United States consumed alcohol on a regular basis.Google Scholar See Crawford, Stephen C., “Quantified Memory: A Study of the WPA and Fisk University Slave Narrative Collections” (Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago, 1980).Google Scholar

²¹ Slaves transported by ship were probably drawn substantially from coastal areas, where a poor disease environment may have reduced heights. On the other hand, plantation size in the South increased over time through sales from small to larger units and slaves from areas of small plantations tended to be taller. Although the net effects are unknown at present these data are interesting historically, regardless of the net effects, because a large share of slaves lived near coastal areas.Google Scholar

²² Tanner, J. M., Fetus Into Man: Physical Growth from Conception to Maturity (Cambridge, Mass., 1978), pp. 46–47;Google ScholarAbel, E. L., “Consumption of Alcohol During Pregnancy: A Review of Effects on Growth and Development of Offspring,” Human Biology, 54 (09 1982), pp. 421–53.Google Scholar

²³ Tanner, Fetus Into Man, pp. 131–37. High mortality rates, shown in Table 4, may have claimed relatively more of those who adapted poorly to deprivation. Survivors may have been more efficient at utilizing a given amount of nutrition for growth.Google Scholar

²⁴ Steckel, “Birth weights”; Steckel, Richard H., “A Dreadful Childhood: The Excess Mortality of American Slaves,” Social Science History, 10 (Winter 1986), forthcoming.Google Scholar

²⁵ Steckel, “Birth Weights.” The poor health of slave children was exacerbated by the synergistic interaction of infection and malnutrition.Google Scholar On this interaction see Scrimshaw, Nevin S., “Interactions of Malnutrition and Infection: Advances in Understanding,” in Olson, Robert E., ed., Protein-Calorie Malnutrition (New York, 1975), pp. 353–67.Google Scholar

²⁶ Table 4 approximates the desired comparisons of slaves and whites. The excess mortality is understated by use of data for the entire United States; however, slaves comprised only 12.6 percent of the population in 1860. On the other hand, the slave mortality rates beyond the neonatal period (the first month after birth) are drawn from the records of large plantations and losses tended to increase with plantation size. Steckel, “A Dreadful Childhood,” discusses the causes of excess mortality at young ages.Google Scholar

²⁷ Crawford, “Quantified Memory.”Google Scholar

²⁸ Fogel and Engerman, Time on the Cross, p. 76.Google Scholar

²⁹ Breeden, James O., ed., Advice Among Masters: The Ideal in Slave Management in the Old South (Westport, 1980), p. 94.Google Scholar

³⁰ Steckel, Richard H., “A Dreadful Childhood: The Excess Mortality of American Slaves,” Social Science History, 10 (Winter 1986), pp. 92–109.Google Scholar

³¹ Bongaarts, John and Cain, Mead, “Demographic Responses to Famine,” in Cahill, Kevin M., ed., Famine (Maryknoll, 1982), pp. 44–59;Google ScholarHugo, Graeme, “The Demographic Impact of Famine,” in Currey, Bruce and Hugo, Graeme, eds., Famine as a Geographical Phenomenon (Boston, 1984), pp. 7–31;Google ScholarSandberg, Lars G. and Steckel, Richard H., “Overpopulation and Malnutrition Rediscovered: Hard Times in Nineteenth-Century Sweden,” Explorations in Economic History (forthcoming).Google Scholar

³² Kiple and Kiple, “Slave Child Mortality,” p. 289.Google Scholar

³³ No more than a small portion of the dramatic rise in slave heights relative to modern standards can be attributed to the selectivity of survival with respect to height. According to Friedman, Gerald C., “The Heights of Slaves in Trinidad,” Social Science History, 6 (Fall 1982), p. 500, the difference in average heights between survivors and nonsurvivors over a one-year period was about 0.63 inches among nonadults. During the period of roughly 7 years between adolescence and the attainment of adult heights, American slaves gained about 5 inches relative to modern standards. If the average annual mortality rate was no more than 10 per thousand at these ages, as suggested by Table 4, then selectivity could explain no more than about [(7 × 0.01 × 0.63)/15.0] = 0.88 percent of the height gain. Comparisons of centiles at ages 15, 16, and 17 indicate that girls recovered more rapidly and to a greater extent than boys. Although girls tend to be more resistant to deprivation, it is also possible that tasks were lighter and that work affiliated with domestic activities, such as food preparation, provided a better diet for girls.Google Scholar

³⁴ Malcolm, L. A., “Growth and Development of the Bundi Child of the New Guinea Highlands,” Human Biology, 42 (05 1970), pp. 293–328.Google Scholar

³⁵ It is possible that slaveowners merely followed dietary practices for children that resembled those in Africa. However, substantial amounts of meat for workers signals a departure from African customs. According to one planter, “a boy or girl ten years old or over, who is healthy and growing rapidly, will eat quite as much as a full grown man or woman.” (Breeden, Advice Among Masters, pp. 97–98).Google Scholar

³⁶ Although protein and calorie shortfalls often occur together, at least in developing countries, the investment problem is cast in terms of a protein deficiency because owners recommended that little meat be fed to children, protein was relatively expensive, and because growth in height is “the best anthropometric indicator of discrimination among different levels of protein inadequacy.” See Malcolm, Lawrence, “Protein-Energy Malnutrition and Growth,” in Falkner, Frank and Tanner, J. M., eds., Human Growth, (New York, 1979), vol. 3, p. 366.Google Scholar On dietary studies, animal experiments, and anthropometric measurements, see Scrimshaw, Nevin S. and Gordon, John E., eds., Malnutrition, Learning and Behavior (Cambridge, Mass., 1968);Google ScholarChavez, Adolfo and Martinez, Celia, Growing Up in a Developing Community (Mexico, 1982). The dietary standards for high quality (complete) protein per day used in the calculations are 16 grams at ages 1–3, 20 grams at ages 4–6, and 25 grams at ages 7–9.Google Scholar Based on a medium carcass and data in Watt, Bernice K. and Annabel L. Merrill, “Composition of Foods–Raw, Processed, Prepared,”Google ScholarU.S. Department of Agriculture, Agriculture Handbook No. 9 (Washington, D.C., 1950), p. 40, sufficient pork to make up for a 50 percent shortfall in protein would have provided 308 calories at ages 1–3, 384 calories at ages 4–6, and 480 calories at ages 7–9. Recommended calorie intakes are 1,360 at ages 1–3, 1,830 at ages 4–6 and 2,190 at ages 7–9.Google Scholar The recommended intakes are from Passmore, R., Nicol, B. M., and Rao, M. Narayana, Handbook on Human Nutritional Requirements (Geneva, 1974), table 1.Google Scholar

³⁷ Watt and Merrill, “Composition of Foods,” p. 40, specifies that the protein content of a medium carcass of pork is 11.9 percent.Google Scholar The average wholesale price of mess pork at New Orleans was 7 cents per pound from 1840 to 1860 as calculated from Cole, Arthur Harrison, Wholesale Commodity Prices in the United States, 1700–1861 (Cambridge, Mass., 1938).Google Scholar

³⁸ Margo and Steckel, “The Heights of American Slaves,” p. 531.Google Scholar

³⁹ Fogel and Engerman, Time on the Cross, p. 76.Google Scholar

⁴⁰ The calculations assume that adult height was reached at age 22.Google Scholar

⁴¹ This conclusion is reasonably robust to the assumptions and methods. If the protein deficit was 30 percent, the rate of return would have been 2.5 percent. The improved diet would have reduced the incidence of illness and mortality during childhood; however, a reduction of 50 percent in the mortality rates increases the rate of return relatively little—from –1.7 percent to –1.1 percent. As a result of improved feeding, slaves may have entered the work force earlier, yet the rate of return is –0.3 percent if children began work at age 9 and is 1.2 percent if they began work at age 8. If the protein deficit was 30 percent, mortality rates were reduced by 50 percent, and children began work at age 9, the rate of return is 4.5 percent. In contrast, the average rate of return on the market price of a slave was about 10 percent (Fogel and Engerman, Time on the Cross, p. 70). The estimated rates of return are about 2 percentage points higher for males compared with females. In view of the poor disease environment, slaves may not have been able to achieve modern height standards despite the improved feeding. In other words, infections and intestinal parasites may have claimed some of the better diet. This difficulty, sometimes called the “leaky nutritional bucket”Google Scholar(see Mitra, Asok, “Making Hard Choices Between Cost-Benefit Streams of Health and Nutrition Programs,” PAG Bulletin, 5 (03 1975), pp. 36–44), would have reduced the estimated rate of return to feeding meat. More complex formulations of the decision problem may suggest other insights into behavior. The diet could be examined in the context of an optimal control problem, for example.Google Scholar

⁴² Higgs, Robert, Competition and Coercion: Blacks in the American Economy, 1865–1914 (Cambridge, Mass., 1977);Google ScholarRansom, Roger L. and Sutch, Richard, One Kind of Freedom: The Economic Consequences of Emancipation (Cambridge, Mass., 1977).Google ScholarMargo, Robert A., “Educational Achievement in Segregated School Systems: The Effect of ‘Separate but Equal,’” NBER Working Paper No. 1620 (Cambridge, Mass., 1985).Google Scholar

⁴³ Unless malnutrition is severe, ordinarily brain damage is relatively unimportant for behavior because the brain has a large functional reserve. Instead, malnutrition limits the energy that children can expend on exploration, play, and other sources of stimulation that are important for cognitive development. Moreover, poorly-fed children seek and receive less stimulation from parents and other adults. The results of recent research in this area are discussed in Chavez and Martinez, Growing Up in A Developing Community;Google Scholar and Brozek, Josef M. and Schurch, Beat, eds., Malnutrition and Behavior: Critical Assessment of Key Issues (Lausanne, 1984).Google Scholar

⁴⁴ Study of wealth accumulation by birth cohort may provide insights into this question. To control for other effects that slavery may have had on economic performance, the cohorts compared should be those born just before and just after slavery ended (this assumes that childhood nutrition improved after slavery). A glance at the evidence on wealth accumulation tends to support, or at least does not contradict, the hypothesis. The rates of increase in black wealth were larger during the late 1800s and early 1900s compared with the years immediately after the war, and yet Jim Crow laws and other forms of discrimination were prevalent near the turn of the century. On wealth accumulation see Higgs, Robert, “Accumulation of Property by Southern Blacks before World War I,” American Economic Review, 72 (09 1982), pp. 725–37;Google ScholarMargo, Robert A., “Accumulation of Property by Southern Blacks before World War I: Comment and Further Evidence,” American Economic Review, 74 (09 1984), pp. 768–76.Google Scholar

⁴⁵ Elkins, Stanley M., Slavery: A Problem in American Institutional and Intellectual Life (Chicago, 1976), p. 82.Google Scholar

⁴⁶ Bauer, Raymond A. and Bauer, Alice H., “Day to Day Resistance to Slavery,” Journal of Negro History, 27 (10 1942), pp. 388–419;Google ScholarStampp, Kenneth M., The Peculiar Institution: Slavery in the Antebellum South (New York, 1956), pp. 86–92, 109–19;Google ScholarGenovese, Eugene D., “Rebelliousness and Docility in the Negro Slave: A Critique of the Elkins Thesis,” Civil War History, 13 (12 1967), pp. 293–314;Google ScholarFrederickson, George M. and Lasch, Christopher, “Resistance to Slavery,” Civil War History, 13 (12 1967), pp. 315–29.Google Scholar

⁴⁷ Chavez and Martinez, Growing Up in a Developing Community; Brozek and Schurch, Malnutrition and Behavior.Google Scholar

⁴⁸ Analysis of evidence gathered under the direction of the Commissioner of Labor in 1889/90 and by the Senate for hearings in 1907 suggests that parental altruism was weak among late nineteenth-century industrial families. See Goldin, Claudia and Donald O. Parsons, “Parental Altruism and Self-Interest: Child Labor in Late Nineteenth Century U.S. Families,” (unpublished manuscript, University of Pennsylvania, 1985).Google Scholar

⁴⁹ Genovese, Eugene D., Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made (New York, 1974), pp. 504–5.Google Scholar

⁵⁰ Breeden, Advice among Masters, pp. 281–88. See also Genovese, Roll, Jordon, Roll, p. 507. If young children ate at the same table, it is clear that they had a separate diet.Google Scholar

⁵¹ In addition to work already used or cited in this paper, height studies are underway or planned for Canada by Trevor Dick, Ireland by Joel Mokyr and Cormac Ó Gráda, England by Roderick Floud and Kenneth Wachter, Central Europe by John Komlos, and Japan by Ted Shay.Google Scholar