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Atmospheric Pollution, Health, and Height in Late Nineteenth Century Britain

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 November 2018

Roy E. Bailey ,
Timothy J. Hatton  and
Kris Inwood
Roy E. Bailey*
Affiliation:
Honorary Senior Lecturer, Department of Economics, University of Essex, Colchester, CO4 3SQ, UK.
Timothy J. Hatton*
Affiliation:
Professor, Department of Economics, University of Essex, Colchester, CO4 3SQ, UK, and Australian National University, Canberra, ACT 2601, Australia.
Kris Inwood*
Affiliation:
Professor, Economics, University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario N1E 3C9Canada.
*
E-mail: [email protected]
E-mail: [email protected] (corresponding author)
E-mail: [email protected]
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Abstract

In nineteenth century Britain atmospheric pollution from coal-fired industrialization was on the order of 50 times higher than today. We examine the effects of these emissions on child development by analysing the heights on enlistment during WWI of men born in England and Wales in the 1890s. We find a strong negative relationship between adult heights and the coal intensity of the districts in which these men were observed as children in the 1901 census. The subsequent decline in atmospheric pollution likely contributed to the long-term improvement in health and increase in height.

Type
Article
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 78 , Issue 4 , December 2018 , pp. 1210 - 1247
Copyright
© 2018 The Economic History Association. All rights reserved. 

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Footnotes

We are grateful to Jonathan Chapman, Humphrey Southall, Adam Bonnycastle, and the U.K. Data Archive for help with data sources, and to Jeremy van Dijk and Danielle van Wagner for able research assistance. We have benefited from useful comments from Walker Hanlon, John Tang, and Zachary Ward, as well as from participants at seminars at Monash University, Australian National University, and NHH Bergen, a workshop at the London School of Economics, and the World Congress of Cliometrics at Strasbourg. We much appreciate guidance from the editor and two anonymous referees. Hatton gratefully acknowledges support from the Australian Research Council, Discovery Project DP140103603.

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