Preliminary Programme

Scholars have puzzled over the dearth of quantitative evidence of customary gender discrimination in late 19th and early 20th century Britain, even where qualitative sources suggest that pro-male bias existed above and beyond what might be expected as a strategic response to males’ greater neonatal fragility or relatively superior labor market prospects. Using a new longitudinal data source consisting of individual-level infant medical records from turn-of-the-century London, we investigate whether child gender, amongst other possible factors, played a role in the quality and quantity of investment in human capital. Gender bias in the provision of early-life healthcare and nutrition is of special concern since childhood deprivation and disadvantage can hamper the successful development of capabilities including immunity and cognitive skills, which can in turn have long-range implications for human capital, socioeconomic, and wellbeing outcomes in adulthood. Early results indicate differences by infant gender in weight-for-age and catch-up growth, breastfeeding practices, parental effort associated with clinic attendance, and selection into clinics. Together, these findings provide quantitative substantiation of customary sexism in this period, and suggest that parents placed greater priority on promoting the health of their sons than that of their daughters. (Show less)

The utilization of biological indicators in history and social sciences has contributed to the development of new research inquiries and insights on classical topics like the evolution of living standards in the long run. Anthropometrics, stature in particular, exemplifies several decades of relevant outcomes concerning the relationship between socioeconomic processes and the living conditions of the population. Nevertheless, these approaches can be substantially enriched on the basis of a closer dialogue between social sciences and human biology.
In this paper it is aimed to discuss and to illustrate how the interplay between processes of selection and adaptation shaping human statures over time may result in a refined interpretation about the nutritional status of populations and subpopulations. More specifically, we will illustrate the possibilities that new data sources and indicators offer to study SES-related and/or gender-driven differentials on key components of human well-being in past and current populations. While sexual size dimorphism (SSD) originates in chromosomes, previous anthropological and biological studies have hypothesized on the ability of this indicator to capture environmental (i.e. socioeconomic and epidemiological) effects.
In the first section of the paper, two basic concepts from human biology (i.e. selection and adaptation) are discussed in light of the applications that economic history has done of anthropometric information. These two concepts, as foundations of human biology, should guide the understanding of anthropometric indicators in history and social sciences.
The second section will address the possibilities of SSD to approach the impact of socioeconomic processes on the living conditions of the population in the long run.
The third section illustrates the former theory by displaying and discussing time-cohort series of SSD in three European countries (Spain, England and Albania) among cohorts born during the 20th century. These series are made of microdata from modern health statistics that, conveniently treated, may serve adequately to historical purposes.
Time-cohort series of SSD are being constructed by harmonizing and aggregating data from health interview surveys from these three countries thus coping with two major limitations in previous works, namely scarcity and little representativeness of female height samples. Illustratively, the Spanish series are based on nearly 150,000 valid cases. To be noted, supplementary socio-demographic information permits to control for potential confounding factors and, more importantly, to explore cohort trends in SSD for different segments of the population.
The first results of this investigation (available from the author on request) display that in Spain SSD remained below modern standards among cohorts that were exposed to structural deprivation at pre-adult ages. More highly educated segments of the population appear to have been systematically closer to normal SSD values, and they reached these values earlier in time. This evidence will be compared with that from England and Albania.
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The shifting fortunes of German children during the First World War form a nutritional war story, from Hungerblockade to foreign aid. Nearly 600,000 boys and girls were measured between 1914 – 1924 by medical inspectors at schools ranging from working-class Volksschulen to elite Höheren Schulen. Because children are more sensitive to nutritional deprivation than adults, these data avoid sample selection bias (including survivorship) that plagues data on military conscripts. Unlike military officials who recorded only height, school inspectors recorded weight as well, an important addition since weight responds more rapidly to changing conditions. The large sample size permits precise dating of nutritional insult and recovery. Finally, as both genders were measured, a fuller picture emerges of how deprivation impacted German families. These data demonstrate that the blockade exacerbated existing nutritional inequalities between children of different social classes. During the War, working-class children suffered disproportionately greater nutritional deprivation. Once the blockade ended, however, working class children were the quickest to recover, surpassing their own pre-War weight-for-age z-scores by 1921 and their pre-War height-for-age z-scores by 1923. Their recovery is likely due to international aid targeted at poor German children. This analysis offers an important case study into the power of private (Show less)

Were boys and girls treated equally in 19th century British households? Investigation of gender bias is often complicated by the presence of earner bias, which links wages to outcomes, even within the unitary model of household behaviour. To test whether gender bias and bargaining did in fact occur, it is necessary to compare the experiences of boys and girls in circumstances where job availability and the wages offered were very similar for both sexes. Children working in the northern factory and textile districts in England in the nineteenth century present just such an opportunity. We outline the predicted outcomes of the two theoretical models of the household. We then consider the earning power of boys and girls. Equal opportunities only existed for youngsters below the age of fifteen. After this age girls and women’s earnings fell far below those of male employees. We compare these earnings’ trajectories with outcome measures: diet, height, body mass, mortality and morbidity, and literacy. None of the data we examine are new, all are widely available and some have been much used elsewhere, but they have not been previously analysed to reveal insights into gender bias and household decision making. (Show less)

Although disease is often mentioned as a factor affecting children’s growth and thus final adult height, few anthropometric history papers have attempted to measure the influence of the mortality decline of the late nineteenth century and of mortality from specific diseases on trends in adult heights. This paper attempts to rectify this by exploring the influence of disease on the biological standard of living in Boston during the second half of the nineteenth century. Using the heights of a new sample of men drawn from the Boston House of Correction in 1916-7, 1923-4, and 1928-9 (born between 1861 and 1910) and detailed mortality statistics collected by the Massachusetts commonwealth vital registration office and the Boston city registrar, the paper seeks to understand the influence of sanitation improvements and mortality decline on the biological standard of living. Theory and empirical evidence suggests that acute, highly fatal diseases should have a lesser effect on biological living standards than chronic, less fatal diseases such as diarrhoea (Bleakley, 2007). Acute diseases would only reduce energy available for growth for a matter of months, whereas chronic diarrhoea would prevent a child from absorbing all of the nutrients in his/her food for years at a time. Thus, improvements in sanitation and hygiene that led to a decrease in infant and child deaths from diarrhoea and other water-born, faecal-oral transmitted diseases (proxying diarrhoea) should have led to increasing heights among men born in Boston over the second half of the nineteenth century. (Show less)