Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/223519 
Year of Publication: 
2020
Series/Report no.: 
CESifo Working Paper No. 8447
Publisher: 
Center for Economic Studies and Ifo Institute (CESifo), Munich
Abstract: 
When other measures for economic welfare are scarce or unreliable, the use of biological measures are now standard in economics. This study uses late 19th and early 20th century BMI, statures, and weight to assess how net nutrition accumulated to women and men during US economic development. Throughout the late 19th and early 20th centuries, female and male BMIs, statures, and weight remained constant over time. Unskilled laborers’ BMIs were higher, their statures were taller, and their weights heavier than workers in other occupations. Women and men from the Northeast and Middle Atlantic had higher BMIs and shorter statures, while their counterparts from the South were taller and had lower BMIs, indicating that it was superior Southern cumulative net nutrition associated with lower BMIs.
Subjects: 
BMI variation
stature
economic transition
Oaxaca Decompositions
JEL: 
C10
C40
D10
I10
N30
Document Type: 
Working Paper
Appears in Collections:

Files in This Item:
File
Size





Items in EconStor are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.