Between 1830 and 1860 the United States experienced rapid economic growth but
declining stature and rising mortality. Debate has centered on whether the American diet …

To be criticized by such an eminent scholar as Robert Gallman, one of the leaders of the
cliometric paradigm switch of the 1960s, is in many ways an honor. His critique of my 1987 …

This article explores whether the antebellum decline in heights continued in the second half
of the nineteenth century by using a data set of more than 58,000 US Army recruits born …

This article examines declining adult human stature in the nineteenth century in three
countries: the United States, England, and the Netherlands. While this was not …

The new anthropometric history has emerged in the past quarter century to shed
considerable light on the standard of living or quality of life in the past, particularly in settings …

Average height of the free population in the United States born in the mid-1830s began to
decline despite growing per capita incomes. Explanations for this “antebellum puzzle” …

Abstract The “Antebellum Puzzle" describes the situation of declining stature and possibly
rising mortality in the three decades prior to the American Civil War (1861-65). It is a puzzle …

The modern secular decline in mortality in Western Europe did not begin until the 1780s and
the first wave of improvement was over by 1840. The elimination of famines and of crisis …

Humans have become much taller and heavier, and experience healthier and longer lives
than ever before in human history. However it is only recently that historians, economists …

What can body measurements tell us about living standards in the past? In this collection of
essays studying height and weight data from eighteenth-and early nineteenth-century …