We investigate the childhood determinants of adult height in populations, focusing on the respective roles of income and of disease. We develop a model of selection and scarring, in which the early life burden of nutrition and disease is not only responsible for mortality in childhood but also...

Mortality rates have fallen dramatically over time, starting in a few countries in the 18th century, and continuing to fall today. In just the past century, life expectancy has increased by over 30 years. At the same time, mortality rates remain much higher in poor countries, with a difference...

I discuss the measurement of world poverty and inequality, with particular attention to the role of PPP price indexes from the International Comparison Project. Global inequality increased with the latest revision of the ICP, and this reduced the global poverty line relative to the US dollar....

The first of the Millennium Development Goals targets global poverty. The numbers that support this goal are estimated by the World Bank, and come from a worldwide count of people who live below a common international poverty line. This line, loosely referred to as the dollar-a-day line, is...

PPP-based national accounts have become an important part of the database for macroeconomists, development economists, and economic historians. Frequently used global data come from the Penn World Table (PWT) and the World Bank’s World Development Indicators; a substantial fraction of the...

This paper is concerned with the measurement of the relative poverty of people in different age groups in developing countries. In many instances it is useful to know, for example, whether a higher fraction of children are in poverty than are adults. However, it is difficult to make even simple...

This paper explores the relationship between adult heights and the distribution of income across populations of individuals. There is a long literature that examines the relationship between mean adult heights and living standards. If adult height is set by the balance between food intake and...

We develop an idea from Arthur Lewis’ paper on unlimited supplies of labor to model the longrun behavior of the prices of primary commodity produced by poor countries. Commodity supply is assumed infinitely elastic in the long run, and the rate of growth of supply responds to the excess of the...

PPP-based national accounts have become an important part of the database for macroeconomists, development economists, and economic historians. Frequently used global data come from the Penn World Table (PWT) and the World Bank’s World Development Indicators; a substantial fraction of the...

In this essay, I review Robert Fogel’s The Escape from Hunger and Premature Death, 1700–2100 which is concerned with the past, present, and future of human health. Fogel’s work places great emphasis on nutrition, not only for the history of health, but for explaining aspects of current...