IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/csa/wpaper/2010-17.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Selective Mortality or Growth after Childhood? What Really is Key to Understand the Puzzlingly Tall Adult Heights in Sub-Saharan Africa

Author

Listed:
  • Alexander Moradi

Abstract

Sub-Sahara African populations are tall relative to the extremely adverse disease environment and their low incomes. Selective mortality, which removes shorter individuals leaving taller individuals in the population, was proposed as an explanation. From heights of surviving and non-surviving children in Gambia, we estimate the size of the survivorship bias and find it to be too small to account for the tall adult heights observed in sub-Saharan Africa. We propose instead a different yet widely ignored explanation: African populations attain a tall adult stature, because they can make up a significant amount of the growth shortfall after age 5. This pattern is in striking contrast to other developing countries. Moreover, mortality rates are relatively low after age 5 adding further doubts about selective mortality.

Suggested Citation

  • Alexander Moradi, 2010. "Selective Mortality or Growth after Childhood? What Really is Key to Understand the Puzzlingly Tall Adult Heights in Sub-Saharan Africa," CSAE Working Paper Series 2010-17, Centre for the Study of African Economies, University of Oxford.
    • Handle: RePEc:csa:wpaper:2010-17
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:441bf863-9753-42f3-bc14-ce410a34f95e
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. World Bank, 2008. "World Development Indicators 2008," World Bank Publications - Books, The World Bank Group, number 28241, December.
    2. World Bank, 2008. "World Development Indicators 2008," World Bank Publications - Books, The World Bank Group, number 11855, December.
    3. World Bank, 2009. "World Development Indicators 2009," World Bank Publications - Books, The World Bank Group, number 4367, December.
    4. World Bank, 2006. "World Development Indicators 2006," World Bank Publications - Books, The World Bank Group, number 8151, December.
    5. World Bank, 2010. "World Development Indicators 2010," World Bank Publications - Books, The World Bank Group, number 4373, December.
    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. Anna-Maria Aksan, 2014. "Effects of Childhood Mortality and Morbidity on the Fertility Transition in sub-Saharan Africa," Population and Development Review, The Population Council, Inc., vol. 40(2), pages 311-329, June.
    2. Pallavi Panda, 2020. "Selective Mortality and Malnutrition in India," Journal of Quantitative Economics, Springer;The Indian Econometric Society (TIES), vol. 18(4), pages 861-890, December.
    3. Baten, Joerg & Maravall, Laura, 2021. "The influence of colonialism on Africa's welfare: An anthropometric study," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 49(3), pages 751-775.
    4. Caitlin S. Brown & Martin Ravallion & Dominique van de Walle, 2017. "Are Poor Individuals Mainly Found in Poor Households? Evidence using Nutrition Data for Africa," NBER Working Papers 24047, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. Stefan Öberg, 2015. "The direct effect of exposure to disease in early life on the height of young adult men in southern Sweden, 1814-1948," Population Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 69(2), pages 179-199, July.
    6. Kenneth Harttgen & Stefan Lang & Johannes Seiler, 2017. "Selective mortality and undernutrition in low- and middle-income countries," Working Papers 2017-27, Faculty of Economics and Statistics, Universität Innsbruck, revised Aug 2018.
    7. Alderman, Harold & Lokshin, Michael & Radyakin, Sergiy, 2011. "Tall claims : mortality selection and the height of children," Policy Research Working Paper Series 5846, The World Bank.
    8. Alderman, Harold & Lokshin, Michael & Radyakin, Sergiy, 2011. "Tall claims: Mortality selection and the height of children in India," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 9(4), pages 393-406.
    9. Kalle Hirvonen, 2013. "Measuring catch-up growth in malnourished populations," Working Paper Series 5913, Department of Economics, University of Sussex Business School.

    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. Roger White & Bedassa Tadesse, 2011. "International Migration and Economic Integration," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 14318.
    2. Muhammad Iqbal & Rashid Amjad, 2012. "Food Security in South Asia: Strategies and Programmes for Regional Collaboration," Chapters, in: Sultan Hafeez Rahman & Sridhar Khatri & Hans-Peter Brunner (ed.), Regional Integration and Economic Development in South Asia, chapter 8, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    3. Melloul Anass & Chaik Saif Eddine & Oujgha Reda, 2017. "Empirical Analysis of Islamic Banking and Economic Growth," Economic Alternatives, University of National and World Economy, Sofia, Bulgaria, issue 1, pages 89-102, March.
    4. Nikolaos Dritsakis, 2012. "Tourism Development and Economic Growth in Seven Mediterranean Countries: A Panel Data Approach," Tourism Economics, , vol. 18(4), pages 801-816, August.
    5. David E. Bloom & Jocelyn Finlay & Salal Humair & Andrew Mason & Olanrewaju Olaniyan & Adedoyin Soyibo, 2016. "Prospects for Economic Growth in Nigeria: A Demographic Perspective," PGDA Working Papers 12715, Program on the Global Demography of Aging.
    6. Liverpool-Tasie, Lenis Saweda, 2012. "Targeted Subsidies and Private Market Participation: An Assessment of Fertilizer Demand in Nigeria:," IFPRI discussion papers 1194, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).
    7. Minh Quang Dao, 2012. "Government expenditure and growth in developing countries," Progress in Development Studies, , vol. 12(1), pages 77-82, January.
    8. Nicola Banks, 2014. "What works for young people's development? A Case Study of BRAC's Empowerment and Livelihoods for Adolescent Girls programme in Uganda and Tanzania," Global Development Institute Working Paper Series 21214, GDI, The University of Manchester.
    9. Rosta, Miklós, 2013. "New Public Management: opportunity for the Centre, thread for the Periphery," MPRA Paper 68474, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    10. Hildegunn E. Stokke, 2009. "Multinational supermarket chains in developing countries: does local agriculture benefit?," Agricultural Economics, International Association of Agricultural Economists, vol. 40(6), pages 645-656, November.
    11. Bryan K. Ritchie, 2010. "Systemic Vulnerability and Sustainable Economic Growth," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 13731.
    12. Valentina Vasile, 2009. "Minimum Wage Institution In The Financial And Economic Crisis. Policies And Practices.," Annales Universitatis Apulensis Series Oeconomica, Faculty of Sciences, "1 Decembrie 1918" University, Alba Iulia, vol. 2(11), pages 1-2.
    13. Harms, Philipp & an de Meulen, Philipp, 2013. "Demographic structure and the security of property rights: The role of development and democracy," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 29(C), pages 73-89.
    14. ., 2010. "Reforms of the Labour Market and Industrial Relations," Chapters, in: The Korean Economy in Transition, chapter 11, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    15. Oriana Bandiera & Niklas Buehren & Robin Burgess & Markus Goldstein & Selim Gulesci & Imran Rasul & Munshi Sulaiman, 2014. "Women's empowerment in action: Evidence from a randomized control trial in Africa," CSAE Working Paper Series 2014-30, Centre for the Study of African Economies, University of Oxford.
    16. Christian Bjørnskov & Niklas Potrafke, 2012. "Political Ideology and Economic Freedom Across Canadian Provinces," Eastern Economic Journal, Palgrave Macmillan;Eastern Economic Association, vol. 38(2), pages 143-166.
    17. Dahai Fu & Yanrui Wu & Yihong Tang, 2012. "Does Innovation Matter for Chinese High-Tech Exports? A Firm-Level Analysis," Frontiers of Economics in China-Selected Publications from Chinese Universities, Higher Education Press, vol. 7(2), pages 218-245, June.
    18. Geginat, Carolin & Ramalho, Rita, 2018. "Electricity connections and firm performance in 183 countries," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 76(C), pages 344-366.
    19. Nour, Samia Satti Osman Mohamed, 2011. "Assessment of the gender gap in Sudan," MERIT Working Papers 2011-004, United Nations University - Maastricht Economic and Social Research Institute on Innovation and Technology (MERIT).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    adult height; mortality; sub-Saharan Africa; catch-up growth;
    All these keywords.

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:csa:wpaper:2010-17. 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: Julia Coffey (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/csaoxuk.html .

    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.