Eastern Belgium provides a range of examples of early industrialization. In the nineteenth century, well-established proto-industrial textile and iron production was replaced by mechanization in rapidly growing cities. In this article we examine the consequences of this transition on heights of young men in seven communities with contrasting histories. Men in this area were unusually short in the early nineteenth century, but the trend was strongly upward. There is also some evidence that urban areas experienced setbacks when they were growing most rapidly. Comparison of heights among occupations shows dramatic differences between rich and poor. The gap between the poorest and the wealthiest was at least eight centimeters, and heights seem to reflect even small differences in childhood experience. However, gains in height were larger among the poor, reducing differences within the working class by mid-century.

Based on a modest sample of skeletons from northern Europe, average heights fell from 173.4 centimeters in the early Middle Ages to a low of roughly 167 centimeters during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Taking the data at face value, this decline of approximately 6.4 centimeters substantially exceeds any prolonged downturns found during industrialization in several countries that have been studied. Significantly, recovery to levels achieved in the early Middle Ages was not attained until the early twentieth century. It is plausible to link the decline in average height to climate deterioration; growing inequality; urbanization and the expansion of trade and commerce, which facilitated the spread of diseases; fluctuations in population size that impinged on nutritional status; the global spread of diseases associated with European expansion and colonization; and conflicts or wars over state building or religion. Because it is reasonable to believe that greater exposure to pathogens accompanied urbanization and industrialization, and there is evidence of climate moderation, increasing efficiency in agriculture, and greater interregional and international trade in foodstuffs, it is plausible to link the reversal of the long-term height decline with dietary improvements.

I knew nothing of anthropometry—not even the meaning of the word—when, in 1977, Robert Fogel invited me to give a seminar at Harvard. Over lunch after quite a grueling occasion, he asked me if I would be interested in taking part in a project to investigate the long-term decline in mortality in the United States. As he pointed out, the vast majority of migrants to the American colonies and the United States in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries came from Great Britain and Ireland; it was important, in explaining their subsequent mortality experience, to be able to assess their state of health before they arrived in North America. Their heights and those of the British population as a whole might, he suggested, provide evidence for such an assessment.

I was flattered to be asked to work with one of the leaders of the economic history profession, intrigued by the project—if initially skeptical about the use of height data—and, by the end of a long lunch, enthusiastic about working with Fogel and his collaborator, Stan Engerman, whom I had known for some years.

Prefamine Irish living standards have proved enigmatic. They are intriguing because they hold the key to understanding the trajectory of economic development in the first half of the nineteenth century. They have remained elusive because of the paucity of available information. Using Australian data, this paper examines regional trends in Irish-born female convict heights, identifying divergent tendencies between west and east that left Ulster women the tallest in the land.

The contributions included in this issue celebrate the 22d-year anniversary of the fall 1982 issue of Social Science History (vol. 6, no. 4) devoted to “Trends in Nutrition, Labor Welfare, and Labor Productivity.” The guest editors then were Robert Fogel and Stanley Engerman, and all but one of the eight contributions were dedicated to anthropometric history (Fogel and Engerman 1982; Fogel et al. 1982; Floud and Wachter 1982; Friedman 1982;Margo and Steckel 1982; Sokoloff and Villaflor 1982; Tanner 1982). The issue had a considerable impact on the fledgling field of anthropometric history, even if a few publications preceded it in other journals (Fogel et al. 1978; Steckel 1979; Trussell and Steckel 1978).

The editor of Social Science History at the time, James Q. Graham, hoped to expand the exploration of human heights and their economic and social correlates. He was one of the few journal editors convinced early on that such an agenda fit well into an interdisciplinary historical perspective.

Although the principles of refrigeration have been understood for thousands of years, the widespread use of mechanical refrigeration in the processing, shipping, and storing of perishable commodities began only in the 1890s. Because refrigeration facilitated the hygienic handling and storage of perishables, it promoted output growth, consumption, and nutrition through the spatial and temporal integration of markets for perishables. We estimate the impact of mechanical refrigeration on output and consumption, and hence on human nutrition, concentrating on the contribution from refrigerated dairy products, an important source of nutrients, particularly proteins and calcium. We conclude that the adoption of refrigeration in the late-nineteenth-century United States increased dairy consumption by 1.7% and overall protein intake by 1.25% annually after the 1890s. The increase in protein consumption was particularly important to the growth of the human organism. According to our lower-bound estimates, refrigeration directly contributed at least 5.1% of the increase in adult stature of the postrefrigeration cohorts, and combined with the indirect effects associated with improvements in the quality of nutrients and the reduction in illness, the overall impact was considerably larger.

This article examines declining adult human stature in the nineteenth century in three countries: the United States, England, and the Netherlands. While this was not unprecedented, these three relatively important nations did experience a deterioration in the biological standard of living at a time when economic development was proceeding at a goodly pace. England and the Netherlands were among the most urbanized countries in Europe at the time, while the United States was still predominantly rural and agrarian. The essay argues that a confluence of circumstances contributed to the worsening of the physical condition of these populations even while real income per capita was growing. Among the factors involved were rapid urbanization without adequate public health and sanitation; a transport revolution and related commercialization, which brought people and goods into much closer contact; the consequent integration of disease environments, both within and across nations; and a growing dependence of the working populations on wage income along with a probable growing inequality in wealth and income, exacerbating the impact of fluctuations in food prices. Technological change had an impact on these events by lowering the relative prices of industrial goods. While the term Malthusian crisis (i.e., a shortage of subsistence followed by a rise in mortality) seems inappropriate in these cases, a similar process may have been taking place. It suggests that such a crisis may not commence with an increase in mortality but rather with an adjustment of the human organism to new nutritional circumstances.

Looking back at the more than 20 years that have gone by since the 1982 special issue of Social Science History, it is interesting to observe how important the study of anthropometric data has been in contributing to economic history and related disciplines.While there had been numerous earlier comments by contemporary observers as well as by scholars about heights and their implications as seen in JamesTanner's marvelous study, A History of the Study of Human Growth (1981), the systematic work that was reflected in the 1982 volume was then only about six or seven years old in the United States. It represented the early output of a study directed by Robert Fogel, primarily through the Development of the American Economy (DAE) project of the National Bureau of Economic Research.There had been a few previous publications including my own piece in Local Population Studies (Engerman 1976). My first use of the height-by-age data was in response to a dinnerparty conversation in 1974 with two ofmy colleagues in the Rochester history department:Herbert Gutman and Christopher Lasch.

During the so-called long delay of Argentine economic development, the northwest region experienced a sustained improvement in its health and nutrition status, as indicated by new evidence on heights. Within the region, there was internal convergence in average stature: differences in heights grew smaller over time between the provinces of Santiago del Estero, Tucumán, Catamarca, Salta, and Jujuy. In relation to Buenos Aires, the northwest region did not converge. Within the region, differences in skills, education, and social standing translated into important differences in stature. These differences tended to increase over time. Factors believed to be crucial for the economic growth and welfare of the region (such as the development of the sugar industry and the inflow of Bolivian immigrants) do not seem to have affected the long-term growth in stature.