Health and Height as Indicators of Well-being
The second part of the book is about health and height. These central dimensions of well-being are not only determined by the amount of calories and proteins we consume but also by environmental factors, such as access to water and sanitation systems, public health and medicine, as well as disease prevalence and work load.
Thus, height and health are the outcomes of net consumption of nutrients—the amount we consume minus the body claims that stem from work and disease. Since nutritional consumption depends on income and the price of food, one would expect congruence between height and real incomes. The essays in this section investigate that question. Richard Steckel compares trends in heights with some economic indicators in several countries of Northern Europe and Japan. Boris Mironov, Eugene Hammel and Aaron Gullickson, and Hans-Christian Johansen explore the question with detailed studies of Russia, Slavonia, and Denmark respectively.Steckel's essay places the debate over human welfare during industrialization in the context of the economic development since the Middle Ages. Steckel, one of the pioneers in analysing heights within an economic context (e.g Sandberg and Steckel 1980; see also Steckel 1995), describes the height development in northern Europe as U-shaped. Combining skeleton data with records for military recruits, Steckel shows that average heights were impressive during the Middle Ages when men reached final heights of over 170 cm, on average, which was high even by late nineteenthcentury standards. Heights started to decline at the end of the fifteenth century, plausibly due to climate change, growing inequality, urbanization, the global spread of diseases, and conflicts between states and churches. Stature increased again during the early nineteenth century, likely linked with dietary improvements, according to Steckel.
Thus the long-term trends in heights in northern Europe fit quite well with the long-term changes in real wages outside the most prosperous cities shown by Allen (Chapter 5, this volume). Heights in Japan, Steckel's Asian example, start off at 155 cm in the period 1868—80 and improve with about 1 cm per decade to 160 cm in 1920—40. While Japan's growth rate is similar to other countries, they start off some 10 cm to 18 cm below pre-industrial north-European populations indicating low net nutritional consumption. The figures for Japan are also low compared to other Asian populations, like Koreans (Gill 1998) and Chinese (Morgan 1998), which are close to their European counterparts at the end of the nineteenth century.Mironov shows that average height for recruits in Russia declined by 5 cm during the eighteenth century even as the country experienced one of its most brilliant periods militarily, politically, economically, and culturally. The decrease occurred as a consequence of a decline in consumption for ordinary people. The building of the empire demanded its contribution of the Russian people in terms of taxes. Inequality grew likewise and, as for the rest of Europe, Russia experienced increasing prices of food and a harsher climate. In the beginning of the eighteenth century, Russia was probably on par with the rest of Europe in terms of biological
standard of living. Heights for recruits fell throughout Europe but more in Russia and by the end of that century, Russian soldiers were shorter.
Hammel and Gullickson show that living conditions in Slavonia deteriorated in the period 1750—1900. The authors not only use the standard indicators of the standard of living but also investigate in detail how institutional and market changes shaped the chances of survival of peasant women at childbirth. Malthusian pressure on resources links the demographic response to short-term changes in food prices. Hammel and Gullickson show that the stature of military recruits declined until 1850.
They then show, by using a variety of indicators—including maternal mortality for first and higher order marriages, at first and higher order births, and infant mortality rate—how maternal mortality increased over time in parallel with increasing land shortage, diversion of labour to wage earning, and decay of the joint family system. Thus, the worsening of the conditions at childbirth reflected the general deterioration that took place. In contrast to the rest of Europe, conditions did not improve, either with respect to maternal mortality or living conditions in general, during the latter part of the nineteenth century.Johansen undertakes a broad view of the standard of living in Denmark during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The traditional interpretation is that living conditions improved for the majority of the population in the last quarter of the eighteenth century as a result of a series of agricultural reforms and other measures taken to promote economic growth. Only the poorest part of the population remained close to the margins. This view has been based mainly on qualitative sources, but Johansen's chapter tests it with quantitative indicators. They do not entirely agree. Real wages declined at the end of the eighteenth century, but Johansen argues that this indicator applies only to a small part of the population, in particular day-labourers and cottagers without land who comprised about 10% of the population. The incomes of other groups, including tradesmen, farmers, and possibly their servants increased. Because the incomes of so many rose, Johansen finds no correlation between short-term changes in grain prices and the mortality rate after the agricultural reforms. These findings are corroborated by conscription records, which show a stable average height (165—167 cm) among army recruits from the end of the eighteenth century until the 1850s. By examining all of the quantitative indicators, Johansen constructs a more nuanced picture of living standards than any of the sources show on their own.
While landless labourers suffered, Johansen reaffirms the traditional view that the standard of living of the majority increased from the start of the agricultural reforms in the 1780s to such an extent that the mortality crises of previous centuries disappeared.The chapters in this section show the importance of examining a range of indicators of the standard of living. Generally speaking, all of them show improvement as economic development proceeds, but there are exceptions because not all groups share equally in the benefits of growth. Steckel's essay, which looks at the long sweep of history, shows how economic growth and improved health move together in the long run. Hammel and Gullickson, who concentrate on poor women in a backward region also find that all the indicators move together—in this case because
they are concerned with only a part of society. In contrast, Johansen takes a broader view and shows that landless labourers failed to share in the growth process that improved the lot of the majority of Danes. Likewise, Mironov finds that height of the average Russian soldier fell despite the growth in the economy since the Imperial state siphoned off the benefits of growth, so they did not trickle down to the mass of the population. The possibility of divergent experience within a country must be kept in mind in making broad comparisons of well-being. Looking at a range of indicators is more likely to reveal contrasting experiences than while concentrating on a single one.
5.