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Heights of Native-Born Whites During the Antebellum Period

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 March 2009

Robert A. Margo
Affiliation:
Assistant Professor of Economics, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104
Richard H. Steckel
Affiliation:
Assistant Professor of Economics, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104

Abstract

This paper uses data on height by age drawn from Civil War muster rolls to analyze the nutritional status of the native-born white population during the antebellum period. Preliminary regression results reveal significant differences in adult heights across occupations, regions, urban-rural and migrant status, and birth cohorts. The economic and demographic implications of these findings are also explored.

Type
Papers Presented at the Forty-Second Annual Meeting of the Economic History Association
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1983

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References

1 Statements in the text are fully documented in Fogel, Robert W. et al. , “Changes in American and British Stature Since the Mid- 18th Century: A Preliminary Report on the Usefulness of Data on Height for the Analysis of Secular Trends in Nutrition, Labor Productivity, and Labor Welfare,” NBER Working Paper No. 890 (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1982);Google ScholarFogel, Robert W. and Engerman, Stanley L., eds., Secular Trends in Nutrition, Labor Welfare, and Labor Productivity, special issue of Social Science History, 6 (Fall 1982).Google ScholarSee also Eveleth, Phyllis B. and Tanner, James M., Worldwide Variation in Human Growth (London, 1976);Google ScholarTanner, James M., A History of the Study of Human Growth (Cambridge, 1981);Google ScholarGreene, Lawrence A. and Johnson, Francis E., Social and Biological Predictions of Nutritional Status, Physical Growth, and Neurological Development (New York, 1980);Google ScholarTrussell, James and Steckel, Richard, “The Age of Slaves at Menarche and Their First Birth,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 16 (10 1979), 363–80;Google Scholar and Steckel, Richard H., “Height and Per Capita Income,” Historical Methods, 16 (Winter 1983).Google Scholar

2 Use of military data to infer civilian height distributions poses a number of questions, the most important of which is undersampling of shorter heights, or “shortfall.” Analysis of the distribution of heights in the data reveals little or no evidence of truncation; accordingly, our estimates are unadjusted for shortfall. These issues are discussed in Fogel, et al., “Changes,” pp. 42–53;Google ScholarWachter, Kenneth W., “Graphical Estimation of Military Heights,” Historical Methods, 14 (Winter 1981), 3142.Google Scholar

3 Baxter, J. H., Statistics, Medical and Anthropological, of the Provost-Marshal-General's Bureau, Derived from Records of the Examination for Military Service in the Armies of the United States During the Late War of the Rebellion of Over a Million Recruits, Drafted Men, Substitutes, and Enrolled Men, 2 vols. (Washington, D.C., 1875);Google ScholarGould, Benjamin Apthorp, Investigations into the Military and Anthropological Statistics of American Soldiers (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1869).Google Scholar

4 The non-farm rural born are soldiers born in rural areas who reported an occupation other than farmer; analogously for the non-farm urban born.Google Scholar

5 The positive association between long-distance migration and height was noted in the aggregate by Gould, Investigations, pp. 126–27.Google ScholarSee also Sokoloff, Kenneth L. and Villaflor, Georgia C., “The Early Achievement of Modern Stature in America,” in Fogel, and Engerman, , eds., Secular Trends.Google Scholar

6 The predicted adult height of common laborers born and enlisting in large urban areas in New England or the Middle Atlantic states (67.2–67.4 inches) was only slightly greater than the mean height of adult slaves in the American South (67.1 inches); preliminary analysis indicates that the mean heights of both groups at younger ages (16–24) were nearly identical. Tanner has argued that the slave height-by-age profile (and by inference the profile for common laborers) suggests continuous undernutrition (relative to modern nutritional standards) throughout the growing years, rather than, as appears to be true of British factory children of the 1830s, infant or fetal malnutrition. See Margo, Robert A. and Steckel, Richard H., “The Height of American Slaves: New Evidence on Slave Nutrition and Health,” in Fogel, and Engerman, , eds., Secular Trends;Google ScholarTanner, A History, pp. 147–61, 168;Google ScholarTanner, James M., “The Potential of Auxological Data for Monitoring Economic and Social Well-Being,” in Fogel, and Engerman, , eds., Secular Trends.Google Scholar

7 Unfortunately, urban enlistment may be a poor proxy for urban residence, because enlistment was by congressional district, and enlistment places were usually in urban areas.Google Scholar

8 Gould, Investigations, p. 92.Google Scholar The test is based on the standard error of the estimated third moment of the distribution of height orthe regression residuals, grouped by yearof enlistment; see Kendall, Maurice G. and Stuart, Alan, The Advanced Theory of Statistics, Vol. I (New York, 1958), p. 243.Google Scholar

9 The reason for excluding 25–29 year-olds is that some troops in this age group may have grown because of cartilage expansion; see Tanner, James M., Foetus into Man: Physical Growth from Conception to Maturity (Cambridge, 1978), pp. 1819.Google Scholar

10 Cf. Williamson, Jeffrey G. and Lindert, Peter H., American Inequality: A Macroeconomic History (New York, 1980). There were no significant occupational differences in adult height in the colonial muster rolls; see Sokoloff and Villaflor, “The Early Achievement.” Analysis of modern data reveals a strong positive association between mean height and per capita income, and a strong negative relationship with the degree of income inequality; see Steckel, “Height and Per Capita Income.”Google Scholar

11 Among slaves height was systematically related to occupation and to labor productivity, as measured by the slave's value; see Friedman, Gerald C., “The Heights of Slaves in Trinidad,” in Fogel, and Engerman, , eds., Secular Trends; and Margo and Steckel, “The Heights of American Slaves.”Google Scholar

12 Less than 10% of east-west migrants were age 20 or under.Google Scholar

13 Mortality rates in urban areas may have increased between 1820 and 1860; see Fogel, Robert W. et al. , “The Economics of Mortality in North America, 1650–1910: A Description of a Research Project,” Historical Methods, 11 (Spring 1978), 75108, and the literature cited therein.Google Scholar