Weight and Height of a Population in 1943

Abstract

The present paper deals with an attempt to evaluate the fertility of parents whose children suffer from certain hereditary pathological conditions. The data are derived from genetical surveys made in England, Denmark and Sweden. Calculations of mutation rates for some of the genes involved have been based on the number of new genes needed to replace the loss in affected individuals who are either completely infertile or of reduced fertility. The assumption has also been made that the fertility of the parents of affected individuals would be equal to that of the general population. It is interesting to inquire if this could be true. The data permitted the calculation of mean family size of sibships; they gave also the birth year of the propositi.In analysing the material, for size of family, correction had to be made for the fact that bigger families were more likely to have contained affected individuals and more likely to be discovered. This was done by the formulae given by Greenwood & Yule (1914):where a is the number of sibships and m is the total number of sibs in each. The standard errors were calculated from the following formula : #(a x m)S(u/m) -(s(a))2]/[s(a/m)]2.

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

“…1956-60 to 1976-80: Height-by-age measured in 2000 from Health Survey for England (kindly supplied by Climent Quintana-Domeque); 1931-35 to 1956-60: Height-by age measured in 1980 from Rosenbaum et al (1985), p. 117 (this is taken as the base for the series); 1906-10 to 1931-35: Height-by-age self-reported in 1946 and 1958 from Kuh et al (1991Kuh et al ( ), p. 10031886-1890to 1906-1910: Height-by-age measured in 1943 from Kemsley (1950) p. 163; 1861-5 to 1886-90: Heights of army recruits age 20 (adjusted for truncation) from Rosenbaum (1988), p. 282.…”

100 Years of Heights and Weights

“…It also gives standard deviations of 6.7 em and 7.6 kg (6.3em and 7.3 kg with Sheppard corrections) with a correlation coefficient of 0.52 (0.58). 1943. Kemsley (1950) published the results of a wartime survey, conducted by the Ministry of Food, of civilians working in large and small firms; the survey numbered 27 500 men and 33 500 women, including also a sample of housewives. 1941-48.…”

Deaths from domestic falls and fractures.

“…If the wartime recession in mortality is disregarded, the continual increase in mortality from the beginning of the century until 1960 corresponds to observed differences in stature of British adults. Boyne and Leitch (1954), in a review of available data of secular change in height, noted that the studies by Cathcart, Hughes, and Chalmers (1935), Clements and Pickett (1952), and Kemsley (1950), which were made independently at three different dates, show a decline in stature following the age of 25 years, and all show a sudden rise in mean height of age-groups born in the first 10 years of this century. The rise in mean stature was over 1 cm in women and over 1 * 5 cm in men.…”