It is easier to discover why people died in the past than how healthy they were during their lives. However, in both Europe and North America, much evidence survives about the health of young males from the medical examination of recruits to the armed forces. The paper discusses the possibility...

Data on human height can provide an index that may measure more accurately changes in the standard of living than the more conventional real wage index. Height data, like those on real wages, are relatively abundant and extend back to the seventeenth century. In a previous paper, we developed...