The Influence of Health on Labor Productivity: An Analysis of European Conscription Data

Height has been used in a growing literature as a measure of net nutrition throughout the first 20 years of life. This paper builds on that literature by considering the influence that net nutrition has on a population’s labor productivity. Using data from Danish and Italian conscription programs, we are able to create a more rigorous estimate of changes in final adult height over aperiod of 150 years by distributing the measured adult height over the age distribution of the male population. This calculation creates a measure of the age-distributed height of the laborforce, which then permits an analysis over a longer period of time than other contemporaryessays on height and labor productivity. My findings suggest that net nutrition in people’s first 20 years has had a significant and positive effect on labor productivity over the twentieth century. Additionally, I explore and hypothesize on the causal relationship between nutrition andeducational achievement.