Biological Conditions and Economic Development: Westward Expansion and Health in Late Nineteenth‐ and Early Twentieth‐Century Montana

Net Nutrition and the Transition From 19th Century Bound to Free-Labor: Assessing Dietary Change With Differences-in-Decompositions

“…Because farm laborers likely came to maturity under better biological conditions, including them in a single unskilled occupation category downwardly biases farm labor and upwardly biases common unskilled workers’ cumulative net nutrition [Margo and Steckel (1992, pp. 514–517), Carson (2011b, 2013b)]. Therefore, common and farm laborers are separated in the results that follow.…”

“…785, 787, and 794)]. Moreover, under bound-labor, the regional advantage that accrued to whites did not extend to blacks native on the Plains, and U.S. born whites in the Far West had lower net nutrition compared to other areas within the United States [Carson (2013b, 2015)].…”

Net nutrition on the late 19thand early 20thcentury American Great Plains: a robust biological response to the challenges to the Turner Hypothesis

“…Height, BMI and weight also vary with economic development, and each are used here to assess late 19 th and early 20 th century net nutrition on the American Great Plains (Cochrane, 1979, pp. 24-32, 69-77;Carson, 2013a;Carson, 2013b;Zehetmeyer, 2013;Dirks, 2016).…”

Body Mass Index Values in the Gentry and Peasantry in Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century Poland

“…A discussion is still going on about the relationship between body mass, wealth and inequality, both in historical populations (e.g. Cuff, 1993;Henderson, 2005;Carson, 2009Carson, , 2013Komlos & Brabec, 2010Koch, 2011;Sunder, 2013) and contemporary ones (Fine et al, 1999;Mantzoros, 1999;Cole et al, 2000;Ashley et al, 2001;Field et al, 2001;Flegal et al, 2001Flegal et al, , 2010Janečková, 2001;Cho et al, 2002;Koh-Banerjee et al, 2004;Schulze et al, 2004Schulze et al, , 2006Flegal, 2005;Farooqi & O'Rahilly, 2007;Li et al, 2008). In the USA at the end of the 19th century about 3.5% of white middle-aged men were obese, while a century later this proportion had increased by as much as 10 times (Helmchen & Henderson, 2004).…”

“…Body Mass Index (BMI), used as an indicator of underweight, overweight and obesity in studies on contemporary populations of children and adults (Kozieł et al, 2004(Kozieł et al, , 2006Chrzanowska et al, 2007;Hanć et al, 2015), can also be used successfully for historical ones (Costa, 1993). Using 19th century US prison records of the height and weight of inmates, Carson (2013) studied the relationship between BMI, demographic, socioeconomic and wealth status and inequality. His research showed that farmers had greater BMIs than unskilled workers, as did blacks compared with whites.…”