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INEQUALITY IN THE AMERICAN SOUTH: EVIDENCE FROM THE NINETEENTH CENTURY MISSOURI STATE PRISON

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 July 2008

SCOTT ALAN CARSON
Affiliation:
School of Business, University of Texas, Permian Basin University of Munich, CESifo, Germany

Summary

The use of height data to measure living standards is now a well-established method in economic history. Moreover, a number of core findings in the literature are widely agreed upon. There are still some populations, places and times, however, for which anthropometric evidence remains thin. One example is 19th century African-Americans in US border-states. This paper introduces a new data set from the Missouri state prison to track the heights of comparable black and white men born between 1820 and 1904. Modern blacks and whites come to comparable terminal statures when brought to maturity under optimal conditions; however, whites were persistently taller than blacks in the Missouri prison sample by two centimetres. Throughout the 19th century, black and white adult statures remained approximately constant, while black youth stature increased during the antebellum period.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright Cambridge University Press 2007

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