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...

This anthropometric study focuses on the histories of three important Latin American countries - Brazil, Peru, and Argentina - during the 19th century, and tests hypotheses concerning their welfare trends. While non-farm Brazil and Lima, Peru, started at relatively low height levels, Brazil made...

Anthropometric indicators can shed light on the 'Great Divergence' debate on the timing of the welfare development in China and Europe. We mobilise two new datasets of some 13,000 Southern Chinese contract migrants who were sent to Suriname and Indonesia, and thus supplement the limited existing...