Recent modern life expectancy improvements rely heavily on medical intervention; however, before the mid-20th century, increased longevity was primarily the result of improved nutrition and less virulent disease environments. Moreover, 19th century health conditions varied by race, especially in...

The ongoing process of European integration is likely to increase trade and factor mobility thereby increasing interregional competition and affecting the interregional division of labor. From a theoretical standpoint, rising specialization and polarization of European regions may result from...

The European Marriage Pattern (EMP), in place in NW Europe for perhaps 500 years, substantially limited fertility. But how could such limitation persist when some individuals who deviated from the EMP norm had more children? If their children inherited their deviant behaviors, their descendants...

Newspapers in the post-Reconstruction South disseminated propaganda accusing Black voters of excessive public corruption. This paper analyzes new data showing that propaganda influenced election outcomes by weakening biracial political coalitions that challenged the Democratic Party immediately...

This paper assesses the causal impact of greater market access on demographic transition during the latter half of the 19th century in the United States. We construct new measures of fertility changes and measures of railroad access at the county level from 1850 – 1890. We are able to document...

Despite the growing literature on the impact of immigration, little is known about the role existing migrant settlements can play for knowledge transmission. We present a case which can illustrate this important mechanism and hypothesize that nineteenth century Danish-American communities helped...

Alternative measures for material conditions are frequently used to evaluate economic welfare during development. The basal metabolic rate and calories are two alternative net nutrition measures that vary by demographics, nativity, residence, and socioeconomic status. During the 19th and early...

When traditional measures for income and wealth are scarce or unreliable, alternative values are effective in measuring nutritional conditions during economic development. This study uses net nutrition and calories to illustrate that during the 19th and early 20th centuries that men required...

Die Wirtschaft der DDR war eine Ökonomie des Mangels. Im Jahr 1989 stand sie nicht weit vom Abgrund entfernt - paradoxerweise deshalb, weil die DDR über ihre Verhältnisse gelebt hatte. Im Zentrum der Politik stand über viele Jahre die konsumtive Verwendung der Wirtschaftsleistung; der Konsum...

This study analyses the physical stature of runaway apprentices and military deserters based on advertisements collected from 18th-century newspapers, in order to explore the biological welfare of colonial and early-national Americans. The results indicate that heights declined somewhat at...