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Height and death in the Antebellum United States: A view through the lens of geographically weighted regression

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  • Yoo, Dongwoo

Abstract

Factors related to geography such as climate, natural resources or waterways often affect human activities. However, traditional approaches such as ordinary least squares (OLS) have limitations in investigating such patterns. Unlike OLS regression, geographically weighted regression (GWR) allows the coefficients of explanatory variables to differ by locality by giving relatively more weight to geographically close observations. GWR depicts spatial patterns. This paper examines the pattern of height and crude death rate in the United States prior to the Civil War by this method. The GWR results show that access to water transportation increased mortality and decreased stature in the food exporting areas of the Midwest, and the opposite pattern appeared in the food importing areas of the Northeast.

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  • Yoo, Dongwoo, 2012. "Height and death in the Antebellum United States: A view through the lens of geographically weighted regression," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 10(1), pages 43-53.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:ehbiol:v:10:y:2012:i:1:p:43-53
    DOI: 10.1016/j.ehb.2011.09.006
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    Cited by:

    1. Sunder, Marco, 2013. "The height gap in 19th-century America: Net-nutritional advantage of the elite increased at the onset of modern economic growth," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 11(3), pages 245-258.
    2. Komlos, John & A’Hearn, Brian, 2017. "Hidden negative aspects of industrialization at the onset of modern economic growth in the U.S," Structural Change and Economic Dynamics, Elsevier, vol. 41(C), pages 43-52.
    3. Do, D. Phuong & Watkins, Daphne C. & Hiermeyer, Martin & Finch, Brian K., 2013. "The relationship between height and neighborhood context across racial/ethnic groups: A multi-level analysis of the 1999–2004 U.S. National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 11(1), pages 30-41.
    4. Brian A'Hearn & John Komlos, 2015. "The Decline in the Nutritional Status of the U.S. Antebellum Population at the Onset of Modern Economic Growth," CESifo Working Paper Series 5691, CESifo.
    5. Shawn A Osell, 2018. "A Substitution Effect as a Possible Cause for the Antebellum Heights Puzzle," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 38(4), pages 1889-1904.
    6. Fen Zhang & Tianyi Song & Xiang Cheng & Tianhao Li & Ziming Yang, 2022. "Transportation Infrastructure, Population Mobility, and Public Health," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 20(1), pages 1-16, December.

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