This study analyses which individual and institutional factors (causally) influence individuals in their educational career and in their choice for an occupation. Chapter 2 explores consequences of parental separation for cognitive skill development of children. In the year before parental...

We measure pre- and post-tax income inequality in Moscow Province in 1811. We collect new data on incomes for 7,399 asset-holding households, including all registered aristocrats and merchants. We estimate the average incomes of 21 additional social groups using financial records from government...

This paper analyses social inequality in adult mortality over the last 500 years in rural Aragon (Spain). It uses individual-level microdata corresponding to more than 20,000 individuals whose socioeconomic status, age at death and other family, cultural and environmental variables are known....

Inequality is an important threat to the globalization of the world economy that we experience today. This contribution uses a new measure of inequality: heigth inequality. It covers not only wage recipients, but also the self-employed, the unemployed, housewifes, children, and other groups who...

We study how mortality reductions and income growth interact, looking at their relationship prior to the Industrial Revolution, when income per capita was stagnant. We first present a model of individual medical spending giving a rationale for individual health expenditures even when medicine...

We analyze anthropometric variables of a society of forager-horticulturalists in the Bolivian Amazon (Tsimane') in 2001-2002. Community variables (e.g., inequality, social capital) explain little of the variance in anthropometric indices of nutritional status, but individual-level variables...

Inequality is an important threat to the globalization of the world economy. This contribution uses a new measure of inequality: height inequality. It covers, for the 1950-80 period, not only wage recipients, but also the self-employed, the unemployed, housewives, children, and other groups who...

This article presents an overview of the study of living standards in Spain from the perspective of anthropometric history and new data from recent research. The aim is to examine changes in nutrition during the industrial age through anthropometric indicators. The paper provides new evidence on...

Earlier research on poverty failed to provide us with consistent measures of its prevalence across space and time. This is due to the limitations of the available sources and to the difficulty of applying to them the poverty definitions of modern social science. This article discusses different...

This paper reviews Finnish economic history during the ‘long’ twentieth century with a special emphasis on policies for equity and growth. We argue that Finland developed from a poor, vulnerable, and conflict-prone country to a modern economy in part through policies geared at both growth...