Height, Health and History

Abstract

In historical accounts of the circumstances of ordinary people's lives, nutrition has been the great unknown. Nearly impossible to measure or assess directly, it has nonetheless been held responsible for the declining mortality rates of the nineteenth century as well as being a major factor in the gap in living standards, morbidity and mortality between rich and poor. The measurement of height is a means of the direct assessment of nutritional status. This important and innovative study uses a wealth of military and philanthropic data to establish the changing heights of Britons during the period of industrialization, and thus establishes an important dimension to the long-standing controversy about living standards during the Industrial Revolution. Sophisticated quantitative analysis enables the authors to present some striking conclusions about the actual physical status of the British people during a period of profound social and economic upheaval, and Height, Health and History will provide an invigorating statistical edge to many debates about the history of the human body itself.

HIV status and sociodemographic correlates of maternal body size and wasting during pregnancy

“…Although the region of origin may partially represent the woman's ethnic background in this population, and it was introduced as a control variable in the model for height, residual confounding of the association between SES and stature by ethnicity cannot be ruled out. The effect of ethnicity on height, however, is likely to be substantially smaller than that attributable to environmental conditions, as described for most populations living under poverty (Floud et al, 1990).…”

Are Modern Environments Really Bad for Us?: Revisiting the Demographic and Epidemiologic Transitions

“…Second, it was argued that sanitation may have been considerably more effective than McKeown (1976) supposed (Cutler and Miller, 2005;Szreter, 1989;Woods, 1991Woods, , 2000, although McKeown (1976) did acknowledge the contribution of sanitation. Third, the view of McKeown (1976) that improved nutrition (standard of living) was responsible for the decline is not supported by current data (Floud et al, 1990;Fogel et al, 1982;Livi-Bacci, 2000;Woods, 2000;Wrigley and Schofield, 1981). Only the argument by McKeown (1976) that effective chemotherapy was not responsible for the decline in infectious disease mortality remains largely uncontested.…”

Secular trends in growth

“…In Latin America 8000 years ago mean height was greater than it is now, 70 mm above its most recent nadir in 1940 (Bogin & Keep, 1999). At the beginning of the 19th century height fell in several European countries, linked to the effects of the industrial revolution (Floud et al 1990). At the other temporal extreme, variations in stature attributable to the season of the year can also be considered a form of secular change.…”

“…Also it is important to emphasize that these Third World trends are mirrors of what occurred in Europe in earlier years. Indeed the whole area of secular height change in Europe and North America during the last four centuries has recently spawned its own specialty of anthropometric history (Floud et al 1990;Fogel, 1993;Komlos, 1994).…”