IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cup/apsrev/v108y2014i01p1-22_00.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Bones of Contention: The Political Economy of Height Inequality

Author

Listed:
  • BOIX, CARLES
  • ROSENBLUTH, FRANCES

Abstract

Human osteological data provide a rich, still-to-be-mined source of information about the distribution of nutrition and, by extension, the distribution of political power and economic wealth in societies of long ago. On the basis of data we have collected and analyzed on societies ranging from foraging communities to the ancient Egyptian and modern European monarchies, we find that the shift from hunting and gathering to complex fishing techniques and to labor-intensive agriculture opened up inequalities that had discernible effects on human health and stature. But we also find that political institutions intervened decisively in the distribution of resources within societies. Political institutions appear to be shaped not only by economic factors but also by military technology and vulnerability to invasion.

Suggested Citation

  • Boix, Carles & Rosenbluth, Frances, 2014. "Bones of Contention: The Political Economy of Height Inequality," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 108(1), pages 1-22, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:cup:apsrev:v:108:y:2014:i:01:p:1-22_00
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S0003055413000555/type/journal_article
    File Function: link to article abstract page
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Batinti, Alberto & Costa-Font, Joan, 2022. "Does democracy make taller men? Cross-country European evidence," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 113745, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    2. Athey, Susan & Calvano, Emilio & Jha, Saumitra, 2016. "A Theory of Community Formation and Social Hierarchy," Research Papers 3467, Stanford University, Graduate School of Business.
    3. Batinti, Alberto & Costa-Font, Joan, 2022. "Does democracy make taller men? Cross-country European evidence," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 45(C).
    4. Meinzer, Nicholas J., 2017. "Social mobility in the early middle ages," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 64(C), pages 111-120.
    5. Wroński, Marcin, 2023. "The full distribution of adult height in Poland: Cohorts born between 1920 and 1996. The biological cost of the economic transition," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 50(C).
    6. D. Y. Jayasinghe & C. L. Jayasinghe, 2022. "An Investigation into Adult Human Height Distributions Using Kernel Density Estimation," Sankhya B: The Indian Journal of Statistics, Springer;Indian Statistical Institute, vol. 84(1), pages 79-105, May.
    7. Blair Fix, 2019. "Energy, hierarchy and the origin of inequality," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 14(4), pages 1-32, April.
    8. Fix, Blair, 2021. "Living the Good Life in a Non-Growth World. Investigating the Role of Hierarchy," Working Papers on Capital as Power 2021/02, Capital As Power - Toward a New Cosmology of Capitalism.
    9. Fix, Blair, 2017. "Evidence for a Power Theory of Personal Income Distribution," SocArXiv qgwus, Center for Open Science.
    10. Fix, Blair, 2017. "Evidence for a Power Theory of Personal Income Distribution," Working Papers on Capital as Power 2017/03, Capital As Power - Toward a New Cosmology of Capitalism.
    11. Fix, Blair, 2019. "Energy, Hierarchy and the Origin of Inequality," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 14(4, April), pages 1-32.
    12. Fix, Blair, 2021. "Living the good life in a non-growth world: Investigating the role of hierarchy," SocArXiv wem9p, Center for Open Science.

    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:cup:apsrev:v:108:y:2014:i:01:p:1-22_00. 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: Kirk Stebbing (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cambridge.org/psr .

    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.