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The author has benefited from comments or discussions with Jere Behrman, Della Cook, Dora Costa, Robert Fogel, Robert Gallman, Bernard Harris, Mitsuhiko Kimura, John Komlos, John Lyons, Robert Margo, John Murray, Walter Oi, Jonathan Pritchett, James Riley, John Strauss; seminar participants at Rochester, Colby, and Tulane; session participants at the Social Science History Association meetings; and three anonymous referees. The paper was written while the author as a Fellow at Harvard's Charles Warren Center.
NUMEROUS GENERATIONS of economists and other social scientists have studied the conceptual foundations and measurement of living standards. Attempts to define and estimate national income, which originated over three centuries ago, eventually led to the system of national accounts in the twentieth century. Although economists recognize the magnificent achievements of the national accounts, research momentum has shifted to alternatives or supplements that address shortcomings in GNP as a welfare measure or that indicate living standards in time periods or among groups for which conventional measures cannot be calculated. Stature is an example now used extensively in the fields of economic history and economic development.
Newcomers to the idea that stature measures important aspects of the standard of living should not be sidetracked by genetic issues. Genes are important determinants of individual height, but genetic differences approximately cancel in comparisons of averages across most populations, and in these situations heights accurately reflect health status.
Many studies show that measures of health are positively correlated with income or wealth. Less well known are the relationship between stature and conventional measures such as per capita income, and the ways that stature addresses certain conceptual inadequacies in GNP as a welfare measure. It will be shown, for example, that stature adeptly measures inequality in the form of nutritional deprivation; average height in the past century is sensitive not only to the level of income but to the distribution of income and the consumption of basic necessities by the poor. Unlike conventional measures of living standards based on output, stature is a measure of consumption that incorporates or adjusts for individual nutritional needs; it is a net measure that captures not only the supply of inputs to health but demands on those inputs. Moreover, heights are available in settings, such as eighteenth century America, where...