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72 results

Page 1 of 4

The Backbone of Europe
  • Health, Diet, Work and Violence over Two Millennia
  • Edited by Richard H. Steckel, Clark Spencer Larsen, Charlotte A. Roberts, Joerg Baten
  • Published online:
    29 October 2018
    Print publication:
    15 November 2018
  • Using human skeletal remains, this volume traces health, workload and violence in the European population over the past 2,000 years. Health was surprisingly good for people who lived during the early Medieval Period. The Plague of Justinian of the sixth century was ultimately beneficial for health because the smaller population had relatively more resources that contributed to better living conditions. Increasing population density and inequality in the following centuries imposed an unhealthy diet - poor in protein - on the European population. With the onset of the Little Ice Age in the late Middle Ages, a further health decline ensued, which was not reversed until the nineteenth century. While some aspects of health declined, other attributes improved. During the early modern period, interpersonal violence (outside of warfare) declined possibly because stronger states and institutions were able to enforce compromise and cooperation. European health over the past two millennia was hence multifaceted in nature.

  • Property rights and economic development: the legacy of Japanese colonial institutions

  • DONGWOO YOO, RICHARD H. STECKEL
  • Journal:
    Journal of Institutional Economics / Volume 12 / Issue 3 / September 2016
    Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    18 March 2016, pp. 623-650

  • Several studies link development to institutions transplanted by European colonizers and here we extend this line of research to Asia. Japan imposed its system of well-defined property rights on some of its Asian colonies. In 1939, Japan began to register private land in its island colonies, an effort that was completed in Palau but interrupted elsewhere by World War II. Within Micronesia, robust economic development followed only in Palau where individual property rights were well defined. We show that well-defined property rights in Korea and Taiwan secured land taxation and enabled farmers to obtain bank loans for irrigation systems. Considering Japanese colonies, we use the presence or absence of a land survey as an instrument to identify the causal impact of new institutions. Our estimates show that property-defining institutions were important for economic development, results that are confirmed when using a similar approach with British Colonies in Asia.

  • Trader Selectivity and Measured Catch-Up Growth of American Slaves

  • Richard H. Steckel, Nicolas Ziebarth
  • Journal:
    The Journal of Economic History / Volume 76 / Issue 1 / March 2016
    Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    25 February 2016, pp. 109-138
    Print publication:
    March 2016

  • Critics who doubt the sources and meaning of some four inches of catch-up growth claim that market-based distortions created by slave traders biased measured heights of children and adolescents. Here we analyze this possible bias using a new database of all slave manifests available at the National Archives. Employing procedures to match names of shippers with known or suspected professional traders, we find that biases in height by age due to trader selectivity were negligible relative to the four inches of catch-up growth.

  • Chapter 8 - Malnutrition: Global Economic Losses Attributable to Malnutrition 1900–2000 and Projections to 2050

  • Edited by Bjørn Lomborg, Copenhagen Business School
  • Book:
    How Much Have Global Problems Cost the World?
    Published online:
    05 June 2014
    Print publication:
    10 October 2013, pp 247-272

  • Summary

    Introduction

    The two-way link between improved nutrition and higher income is well known. Higher income allows people to obtain a more varied and nutritious diet. Higher income is associated with improved sanitation and health, such that there is less loss of nutrients associated with infection. More maternal education (associated with higher income) is associated with better infant feeding practices, and mothers who are better able to obtain care for themselves during pregnancy. Of course, higher income also can bring with it an overly sedentary lifestyle, excess consumption of fat and added sugar, and associated risks of non-communicable disease. However in this chapter we focus on the beneficial aspects of income for nutrition because a large share of the world’s population was stunted during much or most of the twentieth century.

    Similarly, better nutrition is associated with higher productivity. Better-nourished individuals are more productive in physical labor, because of higher stamina, higher maximal work output, etc. Better-nourished infants and young children have improved cognitive skills, which translate to higher productivity as adults. We use the results from micro-level data to disentangle the effect of nutrition on productivity from that of income on nutrition, making broad estimates over the past century for various world regions.

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