Anthropometric history is primarily the study of human height as an indicator of how well the human organism thrived during childhood and adolescents in its socio-economic and epidemiological environment. The development of this field has opened up new vistas on the ways in which economic processes, such as the hidden costs of industrialization and urbanization in the 18th and 19th centuries, affected the populations experiencing them. Populations with a higher nutritional status could afford a diet with essential nutrients for physical growth and are less exposed to diseases; they are obviously going to be healthier and have taller children and will generally enjoy a higher biological standard of living. It is increasingly recognized that GDP is an incomplete indicator of welfare and consequently, physical stature is a valuable addition to the toolkit of economic historians to understand the welfare of populations and this is especially so in times and places where monetary indicators are lacking. With painstaking research, Daniel Franken shows how the biological standard of living improved in many regions of Brazil at the turn of the 20th century, a finding which eluded researchers of the era until now. He also finds that the government's efforts to improve public sanitation increased the welfare of the rural inhabitants in the North and Northeast of the country, a major achievement at the time. Thus, Franken's careful contribution increases considerably our knowledge of Brazilian as well as of anthropometric history. Kudos for doing such an extraordinary interdisciplinary study.
- John Komlos, Professor Emeritus, University of Munich
Daniel Franken has developed a new set of national and regional data to explore the history of health and welfare in Brazil from 1850 to 1950. He has created large historical samples of human stature data by region from military and passport records, which results in the most complete such study every undertaken for Brazil. Along the way he also provides the reader with a useful summary of the entire field of anthropometric history and its basic findings. Carefully controlling for the biases in these datasets he is able to reconstruct the height and thus nutritional history of Brazilians by region. His findings re-enforce the well-known regional disparities between the Northern and Southern regions, as well as the relationship between industrialization and height from the late 19th century. In its very careful handling of height, health, economic and demographic data and explicit testing of various hypotheses with these new datasets, this is a model study. It will prove to be a major addition to the social and economic history of Brazil.
- Herbert S. Klein, Columbia University & Stanford University
Economic History of Living Standards in Brazil: Policy, Health, and Environment, 1850-1950 examines historical changes in the biological standards of living in a period of profound transformations in Brazil, the largest economy of South America. The author analyzes the evolution of health and nutrition of the population and its environment, and the impact of these factors on the evolution of human height. The trends in the stature of the Brazilian population shed light on the effectiveness of social and economic policies geared towards improving the population's health and living standards. The book also points to the magnitude and nature of regional inequalities in human development over the past hundred years. This book fills an essential gap in the anthropometric history of Iberoamerica and complements studies on the history of living standards that use traditional indicators. It will be a reference work for economic historians and development economists.
- Moramay Lopez-Alonso, Rice University.
