IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/ereveh/v17y2013i3p340-363.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Inescapable hunger? Energy cost accounting and the costs of digestion, pregnancy, and lactation

Author

Listed:
  • Eric B. Schneider

Abstract

This paper adjusts reconstructions of per capita food consumption in England from the eighteenth to twentieth centuries by factoring in the energy costs of digestion, pregnancy, and lactation. Digestion costs arise because the body has difficulty digesting certain components of food. Incorporating digestion costs reduced the calories available per capita by 12.7 per cent in 1700 but only by 4.9 per cent in 1909 because of changes in diet. The energy costs of pregnancy and lactation were lower only reducing calorie consumption by 2.5 per cent. These adjustments suggest a more pessimistic level of calorie availability before the twentieth century. Copyright , Oxford University Press.

Suggested Citation

  • Eric B. Schneider, 2013. "Inescapable hunger? Energy cost accounting and the costs of digestion, pregnancy, and lactation," European Review of Economic History, European Historical Economics Society, vol. 17(3), pages 340-363, August.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:ereveh:v:17:y:2013:i:3:p:340-363
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/ereh/het011
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Eric B. Schneider, 2016. "Health, Gender and the Household: Children’s Growth in the Marcella Street Home, Boston, MA, and the Ashford School, London, UK," Research in Economic History, in: Research in Economic History, volume 32, pages 277-361, Emerald Group Publishing Limited.
    2. Jørkov, Marie Louise S., 2015. "Stature in 19th and early 20th century Copenhagen. A comparative study based on skeletal remains," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 19(C), pages 13-26.
    3. Bernard Harris & Roderick Floud & Sok Chul Hong, 2014. "Food for Thought: Comparing Estimates of Food Availability in England and Wales, 1700-1914," NBER Working Papers 20177, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. Penelope Francks, 2022. "Industriousness and divergence: Living standards, housework and the Japanese diet in comparative historical perspective," Australian Economic History Review, Economic History Society of Australia and New Zealand, vol. 62(1), pages 26-46, March.
    5. Eric B. Schneider, 2016. "Health, Gender and the Household: Children’s Growth in the Marcella Street Home, Boston, MA, and the Ashford School, London, UK," Research in Economic History,in: Research in Economic History, volume 32, pages 277-361 Emerald Publishing Ltd.
    6. Schneider, Eric B., 2021. "The effect of nutritional status on historical infectious disease morbidity: evidence from the London Foundling Hospital, 1892-1919," Economic History Working Papers 111030, London School of Economics and Political Science, Department of Economic History.
    7. Schneider, Eric, 2021. "The Effect of Nutritional Status on Historical Infectious Disease Morbidity: Evidence from the London Foundling Hospital, 1892-1919," CEPR Discussion Papers 16361, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    8. Schneider, Eric B., 2023. "The determinants of child stunting and shifts in the growth pattern of children: a long-run, global review," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 120392, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oup:ereveh:v:17:y:2013:i:3:p:340-363. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://academic.oup.com/ereh .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.