Industrialization and Health in Historical Perspective

This essay discusses recent progress that has been made in understanding the connection between health and industrialization in 8 developed countries. Because earlier efforts have been stymied by lack of reliable measures of mortality, the most recent work utilizes average height obtained from military records. Average heights measure a population's history of net nutrition during the growing years. Based on this measure, health improved uniformly during industrialization in Sweden, but it actually declined for several decades in two countries and generally improved with interruptions in others. Health was inversely correlated with the degree of urbanization across countries and rising urbanization led to health deterioration, especially in England, Australia, and Japan. Public health policy, diets, and business cycles were also important for health during industrialization.

Dimensions and Determinants of Early Childhood Health and Mortality Among American Slaves

This paper relies on birth and death lists from plantation records to investigate the causes of low birth weight and poor health of young slave children. The sources of deprivation can be traced to the fetal period. The slave work routine was arduous overall and particularily intense during planting, hoeing, and harvesting. These demands combined with seasonal fluctuations in disease and in the quality of the diet implied that few newborns had escaped stress on intrauterine growth. Starchy food supplements given soon after birth and poor sanitation surrounding feeding provided a poor environment for growth during the first year of life.

The Economic Foundations of East-West Migration During the Nineteenth Century

This paper argues that latitude-specific investments in seeds and human capital provided an incentive for farmers to move along east-west lines. The incentives were greatest during the early and mid 1800s. Towards the end of the century migration patterns changed as farmers learned about farming in different environments, as settlement reached the Great Plains and beyond, and as farming declined in importance. Census manuscript schedules and Mormon family-group records form the basis for empirical work.

Household Migration, Urban Growth, and Industrialization: The United States, 1850-1860

This paper utilizes a national sample of nearly 1,600 households linked in the census manuscript schedules to investigate causes and consequences of migration to urban areas during the midst of America's industrial revolution. Although record linkage was limited to the subset of households that had at least one child in 1850, the data are relatively rich in socioeconomic information. A regional analysis of migration and occupational change shows that while established households were generally mobile, they were extraordinarily reluctant to commit labor to urban- industrial pursuits. The evidence suggests that the presence of children, retraining costs, lack of control over fertility, risk aversion, and an unfavorable view of urban areas by rural residents contributed to their avoidance of cities and towns. The findings also contribute to debates over the compression of the wage structure and the extent of socioeconomic mobility.

Fluctuations in a Dreadful Childhood: Synthetic Longitudinal Height Data, Relative Prices and Weather in the Short-Term Health of American Slaves

For over a quarter century anthropometric historians have struggled to identify and measure the numerous factors that affect adult stature, which depends upon diet, disease and physical activity from conception to maturity. I simplify this complex problem by assessing nutritional status in a particular year using synthetic longitudinal data created from measurements of children born in the same year but measured at adjacent ages, which are abundantly available from 28,000 slave manifests housed at the National Archives. I link this evidence with annual measures of economic conditions and new measures of the disease environment to test hypotheses of slave owner behavior. Height-by-age profiles furnish clear evidence that owners substantially managed slave health. The short-term evidence shows that weather affected growth via exposure to pathogens and that owners modified net nutrition in response to sustained price signals.

Engines of Growth: Farm Tractors and Twentieth-Century U.S. Economic Welfare

The role of twentieth-century agricultural mechanization in changing the productivity, employment opportunities, and appearance of rural America has long been appreciated. Less attention has been paid to the impact made by farm tractors, combines, and associated equipment on the standard of living of the U.S. population as a whole. This paper demonstrates, through use of a detailed counterfactual analysis, that mechanization in the production of farm products increased GDP by more than 8.0 percent, using 1954 as a base year. This result suggests that studying individual innovations can significantly increase our understanding of the nature of economic growth.

Wealth Inequality Trends in Industrializing New England: New Evidence and Tests of Competing Hypotheses

This paper assembles new data and new methods for studying wealth inequality trends in industrializing America. Records of household heads from the census matched with real and personal property tax records for Massachusetts reveal that the Theil entropy measure of inequality approximately doubled over the period from 1820 to 1910, a gain that was divided about evenly between the antebellum and the postbellum periods. A surge between 1870 and 1900 dominated the growth in inequality following the Civil War. Decompositions of changes in the Theil entropy measure reveal that during both periods, inequality was increasing due to the shift of the population out of rural areas and agriculture into urban areas where wealth was less equally distributed. But the increases in inequality were also due to increasing inequality within population groups. Between 1870 and 1910, inequality was growing within occupations, age groups, and the native-born population. Proposed labor market explanations, including sectoral shift that led to higher wages in non-agricultural relative to agricultural sectors, biased technological change, and immigration are inconsistent with the fact that inequality between occupational groups was declining in the last decades of the century. Wealth accumulation patterns by age are also inconsistent with the hypothesis of child default on responsibilities for old age care, at least during the second half of the nineteenth century. To explain the salient facts, we are led to propose a new explanation based on luck, rents and entrepreneurship.