The use of height data to measure living standards is now a well-established method in economic history. Moreover, a number of core findings in the literature are widely agreed upon. There are still some populations, places, and times, however, for which anthropometric evidence remains thin. One example is 19th century African-Americans in US border states. This paper introduces a new data set from the Missouri state prison to track black and white male heights from 1829 to 1913. Where modern blacks and whites come to comparable terminal statures when brought to maturity under optimal conditions, whites were persistently taller than blacks in this Missouri prison sample. Over time, black and white adult statures remained approximately constant throughout the 19th century, while black youth stature increased considerably during the antebellum period and decreased during Reconstruction.
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Paper provided by CESifo GmbH in its series CESifo Working Paper Series with number
CESifo Working Paper No. 1954.
Length: Date of creation: 2007 Date of revision: Handle: RePEc:ces:ceswps:_1954
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Find related papers by JEL classification: I12 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Health Production I31 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Welfare and Poverty - - - General Welfare J15 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of Minorities and Races; Non-labor Discrimination J70 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Labor Discrimination - - - General N31 - Economic History - - Labor and Consumers, Demography, Education, Income, and Wealth - - - U.S.; Canada: Pre-1913
References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
David Cutler & Angus Deaton & Adriana Lleras-Muney, 2005.
"The Determinants of Mortality,"
Working Papers
164, Princeton University, Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Research Program in Development Studies..
[Downloadable!]
David Cutler & Angus Deaton & Adriana Lleras-Muney, 2005.
"The Determinants of Mortality,"
Working Papers
235, Princeton University, Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Center for Health and Wellbeing..
[Downloadable!]
David M. Cutler & Angus S. Deaton & Adriana Lleras-Muney, 2006.
"The Determinants of Mortality,"
NBER Working Papers
11963, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
[Downloadable!] (restricted)