Using a new source of 19th century state prison records, this study contrasts the biological living conditions of comparable US African-American and white female statures during economic development. Black and white female statures varied regionally, and white Southeastern and black Southwestern...

By using a new source of 19th century Texas state prison records, the present study contrasts the biological living conditions of comparable blacks and whites in the American South between the Civil War and Reconstruction. White stature exceeded black stature. Between 1850 and 1870, black...

The health status of people is a precious commodity and central to economic, socio-political, and environmental dimensions of any country. Yet it is often the missing statistic in all general statistics, demographics, and presentations about the portrait of immigrants and natives. In this paper...

When traditional measures for economic welfare are scarce or unreliable, stature and the body mass index (BMI) are now widely-accepted measures that reflect economic conditions. However, little work exists for late 19th and early 20th century women's BMIs in the US and how they varied with...

This study compares two US BMI data sets, one from the 1800s and the other from the early 2000s, to determine how black and white male obesity rates varied between 1800 and 2000. The proportion of individuals who were obese rather than overweight is responsible much of the increase in obesity....

Little research has been done on the body mass index values of 19th century US African-Americans and whites. This paper uses 19th century US prison records to demonstrate that although modern BMIs have increased in the 20th century, 19th century black and white BMIs were distributed...

The use of height data to measure living standards is now a well-established method in economic history. Moreover, a number of core findings in this literature are widely agreed upon. There are still some populations, places, and times, however, for which anthropometric evidence remains thin....

The use of height data to measure living standards is now a well-established method in economic history. Moreover, a number of core findings in the literature are widely agreed upon. There are still some populations, places, and times, however, for which anthropometric evidence remains thin. One...

The use of height data to measure living standards is now a well-established method in the economic history literature. Moreover, a number of core findings in this literature are widely agreed upon. There are still some populations, places, and times, however, for which anthropometric evidence...

The use of height data to measure living standards is now a well-established method in economic history. Moreover, a number of core findings in the literature are widely agreed upon. There are still some populations, places, and times, however, for which anthropometric evidence remains thin. One...