This paper considers the extent to which crime in the 19th century was conditioned on body weight. With data on inmates incarcerated in the Tennessee and Illinois state penitentiaries between 1831 and 1892, we estimate the parameters of Wiebull proportional hazard specifications of the individual crime hazard. Our results reveal that consistent with a theory in which body weight can be a source of labor market disadvantage, crime in the 19th century does appear to have been conditioned on body weight. However, in contrast to the 20th century, in which labor market disadvantage increases with respect to body weight, in the 19th century labor market disadvantage decreased with respect to body weight, causing individual crime hazards to decrease with respect to body weight. We find that such a relationship is consistent with a 19th century complementarity between body weight and typical jobs that required adequate nutrition and caloric intake to support normal work effort and performance.
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Paper provided by National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc in its series NBER Working Papers with number
15099.
Length: Date of creation: Jun 2009 Date of revision: Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:15099
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Find related papers by JEL classification: J24 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Human Capital; Skills; Occupational Choice; Labor Productivity K14 - Law and Economics - - Basic Areas of Law - - - Criminal Law N31 - Economic History - - Labor and Consumers, Demography, Education, Income, and Wealth - - - U.S.; Canada: Pre-1913
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Hamermesh, Daniel S & Biddle, Jeff E, 1994.
"Beauty and the Labor Market,"
American Economic Review,
American Economic Association, vol. 84(5), pages 1174-94, December.
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Naci Mocan & Erdal Tekin, 2006.
"Ugly Criminals,"
NBER Working Papers
12019, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
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