Height in eighteenth-century Chilean men: Evidence from military records, 1730–1800s

THE PHYSICAL STATURE OF MEN IN 19TH-CENTURY CHILE: ANOTHER CASE OF STAGNATION DURING AN EXPORT BOOM

“…Nonetheless, the data for the Chilean case is in line with that of Argentina. In a pioneering work, Salvatore (1998) estimated the average height of the Argentine population for c .1780–1840, finding two clear trends: firstly, a fall in height at the end of the colonial period (as also found by Llorca-Jaña et al 2018 for Chile), and, secondly, an increase immediately after independence (as we also found for Chile), despite the political turmoil of the River Plate provinces. Likewise, for Peru, Twrdek and Manzel (2010) found that the average height of the Peruvians increased marginally during the 1820s-1830s, but thereafter it stagnated (or declined) during the 1840s-1870s, despite the sizeable economic growth of the country led by the export sector (i.e.…”

“…Table 2 shows the raw average height of Chilean soldiers per birth decade, as well as the number of cases included in our dataset, for those aged between 17 and 55. For the entire period, 1810–1899, the raw average height we found was 166.7 cm (with a SD of 6.11 cm), slightly lower than that already found for the colonial period in Chile ( c .1730–1810), which was around 167 cm (Llorca-Jaña et al 2018). This conclusion may seem surprising given that GDP per capita in this period was probably higher than in the colonial period.…”

“…It is well-known that before industrialisation and modern economic growth, those countries self-sufficient in food, with productive land and low population density tended to have a relatively taller population (Steckel 1995; Komlos 2004) 15 . Chile exemplifies these features up to the 1840s, as it was during the late colonial period (Llorca-Jaña et al 2018). Furthermore, low population density helped to stop the propagation of disease (Steckel 1995; Komlos 1998), which was beneficial for the biological welfare of the population.…”

“…More often than not, the officials in charge of measuring recruits were tempted to round numbers up to certain heights. It is also common to find unusual numbers of soldiers measuring exactly the MHR (see Baten et al 2009; Llorca-Jaña et al 2018). Thus, the usual procedure in the literature is to start with a visual inspection of the data (Komlos and Kim 1990).…”

Height and Inequality in Post-1950 Mexico: A History of Stunted Growth

“…(2010); Frank and Shelhoub (2006); Franken (this issue); for Chile, Núñez and Pérez (2015); Llorca-Jaña et al . (2018); for comparative studies see Baten et al . (2009); Baten and Carson (2010); Baltzer and Baten (2008); Challú and Silva-Castañeda, (2016).…”