Background: The trend in the BMI values of US children has not been estimated very convincingly because of the absence of longitudinal data. Our object is to estimate time series of BMI values by birth cohorts instead of measurement years. Methods: We use five regression models to estimate the...

In his recent presidential address to the American Economic History Association, Paul Hohenberg argued that anthropometric history does not meet his criteria for useful research in the field of economic history. He considers research useful if (a) it "helps shape one of our underlying...

In 1979, when anthropometric history was still in its infancy, Robert Fogel and collaborators reported that the height of the US male white population began to decline quite unexpectedly around the birth cohorts of 1830. This was quite a conundrum on account of the fact that according to...

Biologische Prozesse werden auch von ökonomischen Rahmenbedingungen beeinflusst. Sozialpolitik, medizinische Versorgung, Lebensumstände und Ernährung haben eine Wirkung auf Gesundheit, Körpergröße und somit allgemein auf Wohlfahrt. Prof. John Komlos, Institut für Volkswirtschaftslehre an...

Wie schon im ifo Schelldienst 11/2001 berichtet, nähert sich die Körpergröße junger Männer (auf der Basis des Gesundheitsurveys 1998) in den neuen und alten Bundesländern schnell an. Prof. John Komlos Ph.D. und Marieluise Baur, Universität München, untermauern dies mit neuen Zahlen.

Donald Trump won the election in 2016 largely because enough voters in three states, all in the Rustbelt, who had voted for Barack Obama in both 2008 and 2012, switched their vote from Democratic to Republican. Economic dislocations played a crucial role in these swing states or democratic...

Physical stature is used as a proxy for the biological standard of living in thetwo Germanies before and after unification in an analysis of a cross-sectionalsample (1998) of adult heights, as well as among military recruits of the1990s. West Germans tended to be taller than East Germans...

This paper considers what we argue was the first experiment of an exchangerate band. This experiment took place in Austria-Hungary between 1896 and1914. The rationale for introducing this policy rested on precisely thoseintuitions that modern target zone literature has recently emphasized:...

Within the course of the 20th century the American population went through a metamorphosis from being the tallest in the world, to being among the most overweight. The American height advantage over Western and Northern Europeans was between 3 and 9 cm in the middle of the 19th century....

The trend of the height of Indian scouts in the U.S. Army born between ca. 1825 and 1875 is analyzed. Their average height of ca. 170 cm (67 in.) confirms that natives were tall compared to Europeans but were nearly the shortest among the rural populations in the New World. The trend in their...