IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/mhr/jinste/urnsici0932-4569(201112)1674_630icsani_2.0.tx_2-k.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Institutional Change, Stature, and Northeast Industrialization: Evidence from the 19th Century Philadelphia County Prison

Author

Listed:
  • Scott Alan Carson

Abstract

This article considers the relationship between stature, race, institutional change, and proximity to urban centers during economic development. A new data set of male inmates from the 19th century Philadelphia County prison is introduced to compare black and white statures during industrialization in a northern state. White inmates were consistently taller than their black counterparts, and Americans were taller than British and Europeans. It is documented that blacks and whites in Southeastern Pennsylvania who lived in urbanized Philadelphia were consistently shorter than other rural Pennsylvanians, indicating that the relative effects of urbanization dominated proximity to dairy production during industrialization.

Suggested Citation

  • Scott Alan Carson, 2011. "Institutional Change, Stature, and Northeast Industrialization: Evidence from the 19th Century Philadelphia County Prison," Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics (JITE), Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen, vol. 167(4), pages 630-646, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:mhr:jinste:urn:sici:0932-4569(201112)167:4_630:icsani_2.0.tx_2-k
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mohrsiebeck.com/en/article/institutional-change-stature-and-northeast-industrialization-evidence-from-the-19th-century-philadelphia-county-prison-101628jite-2011-0006
    Download Restriction: Fulltext access is included for subscribers to the printed version.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Baten, Jorg & Murray, John E., 2000. "Heights of Men and Women in 19th-Century Bavaria: Economic, Nutritional, and Disease Influences," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 37(4), pages 351-369, October.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Scott A. Carson, 2021. "The Changing Antebellum Period through Early 20th Century Net Nutrition between Male and Females: A Difference-In-Decompositions within and across Group Comparison," CESifo Working Paper Series 9402, CESifo.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Stegl, Mojgan & Baten, Joerg, 2009. "Tall and shrinking Muslims, short and growing Europeans: The long-run welfare development of the Middle East, 1850-1980," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 46(1), pages 132-148, January.
    2. Carson, Scott Alan, 2011. "Height of female Americans in the 19th century and the antebellum puzzle," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 9(2), pages 157-164, March.
    3. Robert C. Allen, 2015. "The high wage economy and the industrial revolution: a restatement," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 68(1), pages 1-22, February.
    4. Chae, Minhee & Hatton, Timothy J. & Meng, Xin, 2023. "Explaining trends in adult height in China: 1950 to 1990," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 161(C).
    5. Goodwin, Barry K. & Grennes, Thomas J. & Craig, Lee A., 2002. "Mechanical Refrigeration and the Integration of Perishable Commodity Markets," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 39(2), pages 154-182, April.
    6. Scott Carson, 2011. "Demographic, residential, and socioeconomic effects on the distribution of nineteenth-century African-American stature," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 24(4), pages 1471-1491, October.
    7. Francisco J. Marco‐Gracia & Francisco J. Beltrán Tapia, 2021. "Son Preference, Gender Discrimination, and Missing Girls in Rural Spain, 1750–1950," Population and Development Review, The Population Council, Inc., vol. 47(3), pages 665-689, September.
    8. Robert C. Allen, 2015. "The high wage economy and the industrial revolution: a restatement," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 68(1), pages 1-22, February.
    9. Hiermeyer, Martin, 2008. "The trade-off between a high and an equal biological standard of living--Evidence from Germany," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 6(3), pages 431-445, December.
    10. Lantzsch, Jana & Schuster, Klaus, 2009. "Socioeconomic status and physical stature in 19th-century Bavaria," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 7(1), pages 46-54, March.
    11. Dorothee Crayen & Joerg Baten, 2010. "New evidence and new methods to measure human capital inequality before and during the industrial revolution: France and the US in the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 63(2), pages 452-478, May.
    12. Thompson, Kristina & Koolman, Xander & Portrait, France, 2021. "Height and marital outcomes in the Netherlands, birth years 1841-1900," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 41(C).
    13. Bailey, Roy E. & Hatton, Timothy J. & Inwood, Kris, 2014. "Health, Height and the Household at the Turn of the 20th Century," IZA Discussion Papers 8128, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    14. Antonio M. Linares-Luján & Francisco M. Parejo-Moruno, 2019. "Height, Literacy and Survival: A Composite Index of Wellbeing Based on Data from Military Recruitment (1880–1980)," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 144(3), pages 999-1019, August.
    15. Derek Headey & Kalle Hirvonen & John Hoddinott, 2018. "Animal Sourced Foods and Child Stunting," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 100(5), pages 1302-1319.
    16. Jacobs, Jan & Tassenaar, Vincent, 2004. "Height, income, and nutrition in the Netherlands: the second half of the 19th century," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 2(2), pages 181-195, June.
    17. Komlos, John & Baur, Marieluise, 2004. "From the tallest to (one of) the fattest: the enigmatic fate of the American population in the 20th century," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 2(1), pages 57-74, March.
    18. Komlos, John, 2009. "How useful is anthropometric history?," Discussion Papers in Economics 10587, University of Munich, Department of Economics.
    19. Headey, Derek & Hirvonen, Kalle & Hoddinott, John, 2017. "Animal sourced foods and child stunting: Evidence from 112,887 children in 46 countries," 2018 Allied Social Sciences Association (ASSA) Annual Meeting, January 5-7, 2018, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 264958, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    20. Manuel Llorca-Jaña & Javier Rivas & Damian Clarke & Diego Barría Traverso, 2020. "Height of Male Prisoners in Santiago de Chile during the Nitrate Era: The Penalty of being Unskilled, Illiterate, Illegitimate and Mapuche," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 17(17), pages 1-24, August.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • J15 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of Minorities, Races, Indigenous Peoples, and Immigrants; Non-labor Discrimination
    • J70 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Labor Discrimination - - - General
    • I20 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - General
    • I31 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty - - - General Welfare, Well-Being
    • N31 - Economic History - - Labor and Consumers, Demography, Education, Health, Welfare, Income, Wealth, Religion, and Philanthropy - - - U.S.; Canada: Pre-1913

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:mhr:jinste:urn:sici:0932-4569(201112)167:4_630:icsani_2.0.tx_2-k. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Thomas Wolpert (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mohrsiebeck.com/jite .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.