Fluctuations in a dreadful childhood
Subtitle: synthetic longitudinal height data, relative prices and weather in the short-term health of American slaves
By: Richard H. Steckel.
Contributors: National Bureau of Economic Research.
Series: NBER working paper series -- no. 10993.; Working paper series (National Bureau of Economic Research) -- working paper no. 10993.
Publisher: National Bureau of Economic Research
Published: 2004
Place of publication: Cambridge, Mass
Language: eng
Number of pages: 37
Subjects: Slaves -- Health and hygiene -- United States; Stature -- Economic aspects
Description: "For over a quarter century anthropometric historians have struggled to identify and measure the numerous factors that affect adult stature, which depends upon diet, disease and physical activity from conception to maturity. I simplify this complex problem by assessing nutritional status in a particular year using synthetic longitudinal data created from measurements of children born in the same year but measured at adjacent ages, which are abundantly available from 28,000 slave manifests housed at the National Archives. I link this evidence with annual measures of economic conditions and new measures of the disease environment to test hypotheses of slave owner behavior. Height-by-age profiles furnish clear evidence that owners substantially managed slave health. The short-term evidence shows that weather affected growth via exposure to pathogens and that owners modified net nutrition in response to sustained price signals"--National Bureau of Economic Research web site.
Notes: "December 2004."

Includes bibliographical references (p. 32-34).

Also available in PDF from the NBER world wide web site (www.nber.org).