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...

Using data from late 19th and early 20th century US prisons, this study estimates the basal metabolic rates and calories for Americans of European descent. Throughout the 19th century, white basal metabolic rates (BMRs) and calories declined across their respective distributions, and much of the...

Using data from late 19th and early 20th century US prisons, this study considers how black and mulatto basal metabolic rates and calories varied with economic development. During the 19th century, black physical activity and net nutrition declined during the late 19th and early 20th centuries...

We investigate how Reconstruction affected Black political participation and socio-economic advancement after the American Civil War. We use the location of federal troops and Freedmen’s Bureau offices to indicate more intensive federal enforcement of civil rights. We find greater political...

Little work has been done on the biological conditions for the US Central Plains. Throughout the late 19th and early 20th centuries, black and white statures in Nebraska increased with economic development, indicating that biological conditions improved as Nebraska's output market and...

When traditional methods for measuring economic welfare are scarce or unreliable, heights and BMIs are now well accepted measurements that represent biological conditions during economic development. Weight, after controlling for height, is an alternative measure to BMI for current net...

Much has been written about the modern obesity epidemic, and historical BMIs are low compared to their modern counterparts. However, interpreting BMI variation is difficult because BMIs increase when weight increases or when stature decreases, and the two have different implications for human...

This paper proposes a novel empirical strategy to estimate the causal effects of federal "redlining" - the mapping and grading of US neighborhoods by the Home Owners' Loan Corporation (HOLC). In the late 1930s, a federal agency created color-coded maps to summarize the financial risk of granting...

The consequences of successful public health interventions for social violence and conflict are largely unknown. This paper closes this gap by evaluating the effect of a major health intervention - the successful expansion of anti-retroviral therapy (ART) to combat the HIV/AIDS pandemic - in...

This research explores the persistent effect of the Neolithic Revolution on the evolution of life expectancy in the course of human history. It advances the hypothesis and establishes empirically that the onset of the Neolithic Revolution and the associated rise in infectious diseases triggered...