The effects of economic development on the biological standard of living: Market integration and human stature in antebellum Pennsylvania

Historians and economists have begun to utilize human stature data to better assess the impact of economic change on historical populations. Adult stature reflects cumulative net nutritional status (nutrient intake net the demands of work and disease resistance) over the growth years. Stature averages, within and sometimes across ethnic/racial groups, can be used to assess how well a population met its nutritional needs. Although, stature can be an indicator of material welfare, more directly, it measures a separate biological, rather than material, standard-of-living.;This study, based on data drawn from the enlistment records of almost 20,000 Pennsylvania-born Civil War soldiers, indicates that antebellum men achieved adult heights between the 25th and 35th percentile of modern standards. Within every region of the state farmers had greater mean stature than most other men. However, there were not statistically significant differences between skilled and unskilled workers. Time trends, consistent with earlier work, show a slight and uneven fall in mean height from the 1820s through the 1840s, concentrated toward the end of this period and among skilled and unskilled workers. Farmers generally had a flatter time profile.;As in earlier studies, in antebellum Pennsylvania local economic orientation was highly correlated with mean stature, and thus net nutritional status. Men born in counties distant from markets for goods and services, removed from growing urban areas, and most nearly economically self-sufficient had significantly greater stature than Pennsylvanians born in regions which were more fully experiencing "modern economic growth." Inverse correlations between mean stature and a series of indicators of economic development and population concentration were consistent and statistically significant. Determining the relative strength of the pathways by which mean stature was negatively affected (increased inequality, increased disease exposure, declining per capita food availability, and/or intra-familial decisions to substitute food consumption for other goods) is an avenue for continued research.