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Bodenhom, Guinnane, and Mroz (2017) are critical of anthropometric research using based on non-random samples. Declining height trends in military and prison data, they argue, are artifacts of negative selection during favorable labor market conditions. We study height trends in the United States in the antebellum decades, which coincided with the onset of modem economic growth. We find that neither the historical evidence nor their own statistical analysis support their views. The decline in physical stature in the decades before the Civil War was real, as Zimran (2019) has also shown. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Traces the contributions of anthropometric research to the development of the periodical "Social Science History." Reason why anthropometric history found a niche in scholarship; Sources for the study of human welfare; Debate over the consequences of industrialization.

Explores the welfare implications of anthropometric measures in the context of Russian and Soviet history. Biological standard of living; Scarcity of reliable economic data and the possibilities anthropometric data offer for international comparisons of welfare; Anthropometric history; Physical stature; Population's demographic and physical characteristics.

Comments on the comparison made to the agricultural productivity in the United States and Great Britain, which failed to measure labor-productivity differences, by Gregory Clark. Assumption of agricultural technology and soil quality; Variables used by the author in the comparison analysis.

Discusses the decline in nutritional status inferred from the height and weight data among West Point cadets in the antebellum period in the United States. Reason for the decline of nutritional status; Details of the productivity growth in food production; Importance of proxies for nutrition.

Explores the unknown cycles in human physical stature since the Industrial Revolution in both Europe and North America. Information on the reduction in the physical stature of Americans born in the late 1830s; When the first decrease in physical stature occurred in Europe; Divergence in the life expectancy of the upper and lower income groups during the Industrial Revolution; Increase in the price of food between 1770 and 1795.

Presents a reply by the author of the essay `Height and Weight of West Point Cadets: Dietary Change in Antebelleum America,' to the criticism of Robert Gallman. Relay to the question on nutritional shortfall; Accuracy of meat consumption estimates; Protein intake; Association of decrease in heights to economic processes.

Explores the relationship between poverty and industrialization in Bohemia, Czech Republic at the end of the 1820s. Sector which were the first to institutionalize the care of the poor; Effect of protoindustrial development on people at the low end of income distribution.

Criticizes an article on the effect of credit allocation by the Kreditbanken on the growth of non-agricultural output in Germany. Opinion on the assertion stated in the article; Demonstration on the effect of multicollinearity on the instability of the coefficients and their t-statistics.

Comments on an article which argued that from the 16th through the 18th centuries English laborers allocated only about half of their income to the purchase of food. Criticisms on the procedure used in estimating the food budget of English laborers.

Aiming to further explore possible underlying causes of the recent remarkable stagnation and relative decline in American heights, this paper describes the result of analysis of the commercial US Sizing Survey (2002). Heights are correlated positively with income and education among both white males and females while Body Mass Index (BMI) is correlated negatively among females, as in other samples. In contrast to much of the literature, this paper considers geographic correlates of height such as local poverty rate, median income and population density at the zip code level of resolution. After adjusting for confounding factors that influence height such as income and education, population density is found to be strongly and negatively correlated with height among white men, but less so among white women. The effect on BMIs less convincing. Other ethnic groups are not analysed in detail because of the small number of observations available. Local economic conditions as measured by median income, unemployment and poverty rate do not have a strong correlation with height or BMI after adjusting for individual income and education.

It is hypothesized that recent trends in US and worldwide obesity are, in part, related to an increase in the marginal rate of time preference, where time preference refers to the rate at which people are willing to trade current benefit for future benefit. The higher the rate of time preference, the larger is the factor by which individuals discount the future health risks associated with current consumption. Data from the United States, as well as international evidence, suggest that a relationship between these two variables is plausible. The authors encourage researchers to explore the possible link between obesity and time preference, as important insights are likely to result.