IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/femeco/v19y2013i2p122-143.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Socioeconomic Effects on the Stature of Nineteenth-Century US Women

Author

Listed:
  • Scott Alan Carson

Abstract

Using a new source of nineteenth-century state prison records and robust statistics, this study contrasts the effects of social conditions on the stature of comparable African American and white women during the economic development of the United States. Across the stature distribution, Great Lakes, Plains, and Southern women were taller than women with other US and international nativities. Women from the Northeast and Middle Atlantic were the shortest within the US, but were taller than British and European immigrants. White women were consistently taller than black women. Stature also varied over time with industrialization and emancipation. Across the stature distribution, women in outdoor, unskilled occupations were taller than women in indoor, skilled occupations. These results show that US women's average statures reflect net nutritional conditions that are not available in traditional measures of economic well-being.

Suggested Citation

  • Scott Alan Carson, 2013. "Socioeconomic Effects on the Stature of Nineteenth-Century US Women," Feminist Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 19(2), pages 122-143, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:femeco:v:19:y:2013:i:2:p:122-143
    DOI: 10.1080/13545701.2012.761347
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13545701.2012.761347
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/13545701.2012.761347?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

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

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Robert A. Margo, 2000. "Wages and Labor Markets in the United States, 1820-1860," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number marg00-1, March.
    2. Robert A. Margo, 2000. "Introduction to "Wages and Labor Markets in the United States, 1820-1860"," NBER Chapters, in: Wages and Labor Markets in the United States, 1820-1860, pages 1-5, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Roderick Floud & Kenneth Wachter & Annabel Gregory, 1990. "Height, Health, and History: Nutritional Status in the United Kingdom, 1750-1980," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number flou90-1, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Scott A. Carson, 2015. "Nineteenth Century Weight in the United States: Revaluating Net Nutrition during Economic Development," CESifo Working Paper Series 5499, CESifo.
    2. Scott A. Carson, 2016. "The Lasting Effects of Maternal Net Nutrition during US Economic Development," CESifo Working Paper Series 5827, CESifo.
    3. Scott A. Carson, 2019. "A Female-Male Net Nutrition Comparison Using Differences-in-Decompositions: Late 19th and Early 20th Century Social Feminism and Women's Suffrage," CESifo Working Paper Series 8037, CESifo.
    4. Scott Alan Carson, 2018. "Black and white female body mass index values in the developing late 19th and early 20th century United States," Journal of Bioeconomics, Springer, vol. 20(3), pages 309-330, October.
    5. Scott Carson, 2015. "A Weighty Issue: Diminished Net Nutrition Among the U.S. Working Class in the Nineteenth Century," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 52(3), pages 945-966, June.
    6. Scott A. Carson, 2020. "Nineteenth through early 20th Century Female and Male Statures within the Household," CESifo Working Paper Series 8616, CESifo.
    7. Scott A. Carson, 2020. "Female and Male Body Mass, Height, and Weight during US Economic Development: 1860s-1930s," CESifo Working Paper Series 8447, CESifo.
    8. Scott Alan Carson, 2023. "Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century Social Feminism and Women’s Suffrage: A Female–Male Net Nutrition Comparison using Differences- in-decompositions," Journal of Interdisciplinary Economics, , vol. 35(2), pages 191-215, July.
    9. Carson, Scott Alan, 2019. "Late 19th, early 20th century US, foreign-born body mass index values in the United States," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 34(C), pages 26-38.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Komlos, John, 2019. "Shrinking in a growing economy is not so puzzling after all," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 32(C), pages 40-55.
    2. Salisbury, Laura, 2014. "Selective migration, wages, and occupational mobility in nineteenth century America," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 53(C), pages 40-63.
    3. Scott A. Carson, 2010. "Nineteenth Century US African-American and White Female Statures: Insight from US Prison Records," CESifo Working Paper Series 3169, CESifo.
    4. Margo, Robert A., 2016. "Obama, Katrina, and the Persistence of Racial Inequality," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 76(2), pages 301-341, June.
    5. David Autor & Claudia Goldin & Lawrence F. Katz, 2020. "Extending the Race between Education and Technology," AEA Papers and Proceedings, American Economic Association, vol. 110, pages 347-351, May.
    6. Clay, Karen & Wright, Gavin, 2005. "Order without law? Property rights during the California gold rush," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 42(2), pages 155-183, April.
    7. Jeremy Atack & Fred Bateman & Robert A. Margo, 2000. "Rising Wage Dispersion Across American Manufacturing Establishments, 1850-1880," NBER Working Papers 7932, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    8. Collins, William J. & Margo, Robert A., 2006. "Historical Perspectives on Racial Differences in Schooling in the United States," Handbook of the Economics of Education, in: Erik Hanushek & F. Welch (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Education, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 3, pages 107-154, Elsevier.
    9. Jeremy Atack & Fred Bateman, 2000. "Downtime in American Manufacturing Industry: 1870 and 1880," Vanderbilt University Department of Economics Working Papers 0048, Vanderbilt University Department of Economics.
    10. Dupraz, Yannick & Ferrara, Andreas, 2021. "Fatherless: The Long-Term Effects of Losing a Father in the U.S. Civil War," CAGE Online Working Paper Series 538, Competitive Advantage in the Global Economy (CAGE).
    11. Geloso, Vincent & Kufenko, Vadim & Arsenault-Morin, Alex P., 2023. "The lesser shades of labor coercion: The impact of seigneurial tenure in nineteenth-century Quebec," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 163(C).
    12. Joyce Burnette, 2006. "How skilled were English agricultural labourers in the early nineteenth century?1," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 59(4), pages 688-716, November.
    13. Haines, Michael R., 2019. "Inequality among industrial workers in the late 19th century United States," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 34(C), pages 125-137.
    14. Kevin A. Bryan & Leonardo Martinez, 2008. "On the evolution of income inequality in the United States," Economic Quarterly, Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, vol. 94(Spr), pages 97-120.
    15. Komlos, John & A’Hearn, Brian, 2017. "Hidden negative aspects of industrialization at the onset of modern economic growth in the U.S," Structural Change and Economic Dynamics, Elsevier, vol. 41(C), pages 43-52.
    16. Brian A'Hearn & John Komlos, 2015. "The Decline in the Nutritional Status of the U.S. Antebellum Population at the Onset of Modern Economic Growth," CESifo Working Paper Series 5691, CESifo.
    17. Daniel Kaufmann, 2020. "Is deflation costly after all? The perils of erroneous historical classifications," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 35(5), pages 614-628, August.
    18. Ericsson, Johan & Molinder, Jakob, 2018. "A Workers’ Revolution in Sweden? Exploring Economic Growth and Distributional Change with Detailed Data on Construction Workers’ Wages, 1831–1900," Lund Papers in Economic History 181, Lund University, Department of Economic History.
    19. Eugene N. White & Cormac Ó Gráda, 2003. "The panics of 1854 and 1857 : a view from the Emigration Industrial Savings Bank," Open Access publications 10197/438, School of Economics, University College Dublin.
    20. Atack, Jeremy & Bateman, Fred & Margo, Robert A., 2002. "Part-Year Operation In Nineteenth-Century American Manufacturing: Evidence From The 1870 And 1880 Censuses," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 62(3), pages 792-809, September.

    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:taf:femeco:v:19:y:2013:i:2:p:122-143. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/RFEC20 .

    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.