In this study we examine anthropometric data for eight countries in the Middle East for the period 1850-1910, and we follow those countries until the 1980s. The Middle East had a relatively good position during the mid-19th century, if human stature or real wages are considered, but much less so...

Land per capita was one important determinant of height in the Malthusian world 0 to 1800 A.D. A second factor was specialization in milk cattle agriculture. It had two positive effects on human stature: first, proximity to protein production resulted in a very low local shadow price of milk, as...

This article mobilizes and integrates both existing and new time series data on real wages, physical heights and age-heaping to examine the long-term trend of living standards and human capital for China during the eighteenth to twentieth centuries. Our findings confirm the existence of a...

This study is the first to explore long-run trends of numeracy for the period from 1820 to 1949 in 165 countries, and its contribution to growth. Estimates of the long-run numeracy development of most countries in Asia, the Middle East, Africa, America, and Europe are presented, using...

Brain drain is a core economic policy problem for many developing countries today. Does relative inequality in source and destination countries influence the brain-drain phenomenon? We explore human capital selectivity during the period 1820–1909.We apply age heaping techniques to measure...

Not only the colonial period, but also the pre-colonial times might have influenced later development patterns. In this study we assess a potential “pre-colonial legacy” hypothesis for the case of the Andean region. In order to analyze the hypothesis, we study the human capital of Inca...