Long run trends in the heights of European men, 19th–20th centuries

Hatton, Timothy J.; Bray, Bernice E.

doi:10.1016/j.ehb.2010.03.001

Cited by 176 publications

(153 citation statements)

References 45 publications

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“…The association of income with height is well-studied in the literature. Generally, increases in total GDP or GDP per capita are positively associated with increases in the height of children, adolescents, and adults in communities or nations (Hatton and Bray, 2010;Baten and Blum, 2012). There are some exceptions, for example, a decline in heights of United States men in the 1850s even as income was rising (Margo and Steckel, 1983;Komlos and Baten, 2004).…”

Section: -----------------------------------------mentioning

confidence: 99%

Global effects of income and income inequality on adult height and sexual dimorphism in height

Bogin

Scheffler

Hermanussen³

2017

American J Hum Biol

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Objectives: Average adult height of a population is considered a biomarker of the quality of the health environment and economic conditions. The causal relationships between height and income inequality, are not well understood. We analyse data from 169 countries for national average height of men and women and national level economic factors to test the two hypotheses: 1) income inequality has a greater association with average adult height than does absolute income; 2) neither income nor income inequality has an effect on sexual dimorphism in height. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 F o r P e e r R e v i e w 2 include Gross Domestic Product (GDP), Gross National Income per capita adjusted for personal purchasing power (GNI_PPP), and income equality assessed by the Gini coefficient calculated by the Wagstaff method. MethodsResults: Hypothesis 1 is supported. Greater income equality is most predictive of average height for both sexes. Greater per capita purchasing power explains a significant, but smaller, amount of the variation. . National GDP has no association with height. Hypothesis 2 is rejected. With greater average adult height there is greater sexual dimorphism. Conclusions:Findings support a growing literature on the pernicious effects of inequality on growth in height and, by extension, on health. Gradients in height reflect gradients in social disadvantage. Inequality should be considered a pollutant that disempowers people from the resources needed for their own healthy growth and development and for the health and good growth of their children. -----------------------------------------This article is derived from the 2016 Human Biology Association Plenary Session titled "Worldwide variation in human growth -40 years later." The title of the symposium is taken from the 1 st and 2 nd editions of books of the same title by PhyllisEveleth and James Tanner (Eveleth & Tanner 1991). Contributions to the symposium were meant to update the topics included in Eveleth and Tanner's books.The purpose of this article is to update and evaluate worldwide variation in economic and social factors that influence the biology of adult height. We analyze national level data for measured heights for the year 1996 of men and women in 169 countries.We conduct the analysis based on two hypotheses: 1) that income inequality has a greater association with average adult height than absolute income, and 2) that sexual dimorphism in adult height remains fairly constant under different conditions of income and income inequality. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 In the present analysis we employ as measures of income the national GDP (to...

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Section: -----------------------------------------mentioning

confidence: 99%

Global effects of income and income inequality on adult height and sexual dimorphism in height

Bogin

Scheffler

Hermanussen³

2017

American J Hum Biol

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“…Turning to the results of the statistical tests themselves, the means of all of the historical distributions are significantly different than the mean birth weight of white, singleton babies born in Boston in 1985 (based on one-sample t-tests presented in (Hatton and Bray, 2010). …”

Section: Web Appendix C: Statistical Tests On Birth Weight Distributionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Fetal health stagnation: Have health conditions in utero improved in the United States and Western and Northern Europe over the past 150 years?

Schneider

2017

Social Science & Medicine

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“…For the postwar period these are based mainly on height-by-age from cross-sectional surveys and these are carried back to the birth cohorts of the 1870s using data for the heights of army recruits (for details see Hatton and Bray, 2010). As Table 7 shows, for birth cohorts over the century from the 1870s to the 1970s, height increased at about a centimetre per decade.…”

Section: Trends In European Heights and Fertility Declinementioning

confidence: 99%

Stature and sibship: historical evidence

Hatton

2016

The History of the Family

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This paper examines historical evidence for a quality-quantity trade-off between sibship size and height as an indicator of health. The existing literature has focused more on education than on health and has it produced mixed results. Historical evidence is limited by the lack of household level data with which to link an individual's height with his or her childhood circumstances. Nevertheless a few recent studies have shed light on this issue. Evidence for children in interwar Britain and for soldiers born in the 1890s who enlisted in the British army at the time of WW1 is reviewed in detail. Both studies support the idea of a significant tradeoff, partly due to income dilution and partly because, in these settings, large families were a conduit for infection. Evidence from country-level time series is consistent with this view. The fertility decline that began in the late nineteenth century made a modest but nevertheless significant contribution to the overall increase in heights during the following half-century.JEL Codes: I12, I38, N24.

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Long run trends in the heights of European men, 19th–20th centuries

Cited by 176 publications

References 45 publications

Global effects of income and income inequality on adult height and sexual dimorphism in height

Global effects of income and income inequality on adult height and sexual dimorphism in height

Fetal health stagnation: Have health conditions in utero improved in the United States and Western and Northern Europe over the past 150 years?

Stature and sibship: historical evidence

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