The secular trend of growth in height suddenly slowed for Americans born after the middle of the 20th century, and the health and human capital of these cohorts as adults appears to have declined, or at least stagnated, more broadly. This paper presents evidence that the physical growth of these...

This paper examines the evolution of the biological standard of living using anthropometric data from approximately 22,000 Swiss mercenaries born between c. 1725 and c. 1865. Analyzing mercenary data presents two key challenges: left-truncation due to height requirements and potential selection...

This paper examines the gaps in Germany’s pandemic data infrastructure revealed during COVID-19 and argues that linking the Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) with administrative health records would strengthen the country’s ability to monitor infectious diseases and their social distribution....

The promise and challenge of big data in healthcare -- Insights and gaps in bid data analytics in healthcare -- Leveraging big data and analytics for predictive risk assessment and KPIs -- Research framework -- Healthcare big data framework-architecture, deployment, and SME validation --...

1. Introduction to an Anthropometric History of Latin America 2. Growing up in turbulent times: Economic growth and biological wellbeing in Argentina, 1966-2000 3. Height inequality in Chile: an empirical analysis for the nineteenth and twentieth centuries 4. Biological Standards of Living in...

Taller people earn more, especially in low- and middle-income countries. We present among the first evidence of this phenomenon in Africa, using longitudinal microdata on a cohort of middle-aged Kenyan adults. We document a substantial height/earnings premium: controlling for gender, age, and...

This paper explores the changing trend of adult height in China for cohorts born in 1950-90. We use information on the household structure and local economic conditions during the individual's childhood to explain the trend. We find that during the 40-year period, the growth rate of adult height...

The height premium has been studied worldwide for years using evidence from countries such as the Netherlands, Denmark, the UK, the USA, Vietnam, etc. This paper links adult height and schooling to salary using evidence from China. We use the data from three waves of the Chinese General Social...

We conduct a randomized controlled trial that provides pregnant and postpartum women with improved access to family planning through counseling, free transport to a clinic, and financial reimbursement for family planning services over a two-year period. We study the effects of our intervention...

The Antebellum Puzzle' describes the situation of declining stature and pos mortality in the three decades prior to the American Civil War (1861-65). It is this period was one of rapid economic growth and development in the United State the debate has centered on whether the American diet, both...

We study the health effects of the spread of democratic institutions and the extension of voting rights in 15 European countries since the middle of the nineteenth century. We employ both cross country and cohort variation in heights and employ a new instrument for democracy and the extension of...

The combination of height information in two sources from French conscription yields a quasi-exhaustive individual-level panel of men in their 21st year. The tableau de recrutement cantonal applies to men when they are to be selected for military service. The fiches matricules pertain to...

Since the mapping of the human genome in 2004, biologists have demonstrated genetic links to the expression of several income-enhancing physical traits. To illustrate how heredity produces intergenerational economic effects, this study uses one trait, beauty, to infer the extent to which...

The impact of individual appearance on career success, either positive or negative, often remains unspoken or even unconscious within the world of work. Appearance has been shown to influence decisions regarding renumeration, recruitment and promotion through biases such as size and gender...

We study whether a democracy improves a measure of individual wellbeing; human heights. Drawing on individual-level datasets, we test the hypothesis using a battery of eight different measures of democracy and derived averages, and include models accounting for several confounders, regional and...

This paper explores the changing trend of adult height in China for cohorts born in 1950-90. We use information on the household structure and local economic conditions during the individual's childhood to explain the trend. We find that during the 40-year period, the growth rate of adult height...

The definition of inequality is complicated and difficult to assess, and there are various means by which it is evaluated. This study uses the now well-accepted measures of body mass, height, and weight to assess inequality's relationship with current and cumulative net nutrition. Taller...

Income households’ share of national income has grown dramatically since 1970 while the bottom 80 percent has seen their share decline. This paper examines economic, social, and demographic changes that almost assure that the income would be increasingly concentrated at the top. Occupations...

Taller workers receive a wage premium. Net of differences in family background, the disparity is similar in magnitude to the race and gender gaps. We exploit variation in an individual's height over time to explore how height affects wages. Controlling for teen height essentially eliminates the...

Longitudinal studies support the proposition that the extent and severity of chronic conditions in middle and late ages are to a large extent the outcome of environmental insults at early ages, including in utero. Data from the Early Indicators program project undertaken at the Center for...

This paper documents differences in body size between white, black, and Indian mid-nineteenth century American men and investigates the socioeconomic and demographic determinants of frame size using a unique data set of Civil War soldiers. It finds that over time men have grown taller and...

Adolescence has been highlighted as a period when environments are critical for the human capital development of women, and thus of their children, but evidence on this from low- and middle-income countries is scarce. We estimate the effect of mother adolescent undernutrition on offspring growth...

Underenumeration of vital events is a problem familiar topeople who work with historical demographic records. This paper proposes a method for recovering information about neonatal mortality.The approach utilizes average heights of young children to predict the birth weight of American slaves....

We revisit the US evidence of the association of height with socioeconomic status. We document non linear height profiles that are different for males and females. For males the profile is a spline function with a single node at mean height. Below mean height there is a sharply positive slope...

Inequality is an important threat to the globalization of the world economy. This contribution uses a new measure of inequality: height inequality. It covers, for the 1950-80 period, not only wage recipients, but also the self-employed, the unemployed, housewives, children, and other groups who...

Physical stature is used as a proxy for the biological standard of living in the two Germanies before and after unification in an analysis of a cross-sectional sample (1998) of adult heights, as well as among military recruits of the 1990s. West Germans tended to be taller than East Germans...