Standards of the present for people of the past: Height, weight, and mortality among men of Amherst College, 1834-1949

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Murray, JE
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC HISTORY
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0022-0507
• DOI: 10.1017/S0022050700113373
• 发表日期: 1997
• 页码: 585-606
• 关键词: body-mass index; west-point cadets; antebellum america; dietary change; population; nutrition; stature; HISTORY

摘要

Whether anthropometric-mortality risk relationships as found in present day populations also characterized past populations is disputed. This article finds U-shaped body mass index (BMI)-mortality risk relationships among nineteenth-century men that were similar to such relationships as found in twentieth-century men. No relationship between height and mortality could be detected. This article infers from the socioeconomic homogeneity of the sample that the BMI-mortality risk relationship, although apparently invariant with respect to time, is driven by noneconomic factors.