scholarly journals Clarifications of a Puzzle: The Decline in Nutritional Status at the Onset of Modern Economic Growth in the United States

2019 ◽  
Vol 79 (4) ◽  
pp. 1129-1153 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Komlos ◽  
Brian A'Hearn
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Economic Growth ◽  
Negative Selection ◽  
The United States ◽  
Historical Evidence ◽  
Labor Market Conditions ◽  
Modern Economic Growth ◽  
Random Samples ◽  
Physical Stature ◽  
Modern Economic

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.

Antebellum Puzzle

2015 ◽  
pp. 750-764
Author(s):  
Lee A. Craig
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Economic Growth ◽  
18Th Century ◽  
The United States ◽  
Long Run ◽  
Modern Economic Growth ◽  
Late 18Th Century ◽  
The Us ◽  
Modern Economic ◽  
The 19Th Century

Since the late 18th century the long-run trend in economic growth—conventionally measured by real gross domestic product, income, and wages—has been positive in the United States and throughout Europe. However, in the 19th century, many Western countries, including the United States, experienced stagnation and even cyclical downturns in the biological standard of living—as measured by, for example, the expectation of life and adult stature—thus creating the “antebellum puzzle,” so named because the downturn began in the decades before the US Civil War. This puzzle suggests that industrialization and modern economic growth were accompanied by an increase in inequality and a decrease in the consumption of net nutrients.

Economic Growth in the United States, 1790 to 1860

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Weiss
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Economic Growth ◽  
The United States ◽  
Gdp Per Capita ◽  
Free Standing ◽  
Early 19Th Century ◽  
Modern Economic Growth ◽  
Modern Economic ◽  
Per Capita ◽  
The U.S

In the early 21st century, the U.S. economy stood at or very near the top of any ranking of the world’s economies, more obviously so in terms of gross domestic product (GDP), but also when measured by GDP per capita. The current standing of any country reflects three things: how well off it was when it began modern economic growth, how long it has been growing, and how rapidly productivity increased each year. Americans are inclined to think that it was the last of these items that accounted for their country’s success. And there is some truth to the notion that America’s lofty status was due to the continual increases in the efficiency of its factors of production—but that is not the whole story. The rate at which the U.S. economy has grown over its long history—roughly 1.5% per year measured by output per capita—has been modest in comparison with most other advanced nations. The high value of GDP per capita in the United States is due in no small part to the fact that it was already among the world’s highest back in the early 19th century, when the new nation was poised to begin modern economic growth. The United States was also an early starter, so has experienced growth for a very long time—longer than almost every other nation in the world. The sustained growth in real GDP per capita began sometime in the period 1790 to 1860, although the exact timing of the transition, and even its nature, are still uncertain. Continual efforts to improve the statistical record have narrowed down the time frame in which the transition took place and improved our understanding of the forces that facilitated the transition, but questions remain. In order to understand how the United States made the transition from a slow-growing British colony to a more rapidly advancing, free-standing economy, it is necessary to know more precisely when it made that transition.

Political Economy of Financial Development: Canada and the United States in the Mirror of the Other, 1790–1840

2006 ◽  
Vol 7 (4) ◽  
pp. 653-665
Author(s):  
Richard Sylla
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Political Economy ◽  
Financial Development ◽  
The United States ◽  
Business History ◽  
The Political ◽  
British North America ◽  
Modern Economic Growth ◽  
Modern Economic ◽  
Political Conditions

A meeting of the Business History Conference in Toronto with “The Political Economy of Enterprise” as its theme provides an opportunity to consider some historical similarities and differences between the climates of enterprise in Canada and the United States. Because much of my recent work has been on financial development in the United States in the early decades, 1790–1840, I shall focus on that period. During that period, finance, enterprise, and economic development in the United States made great strides. Across the border in British North America, progress in all three areas was limited. The contrast sheds some light on the political conditions that favor financial development, flourishing enterprise, and modern economic growth.

scholarly journals Health and the Economy in the United States from 1750 to the Present

2015 ◽  
Vol 53 (3) ◽  
pp. 503-570 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dora L. Costa
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Health Knowledge ◽  
Health Indicators ◽  
The United States ◽  
Health Transition ◽  
Wage Returns ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Modern Economic Growth ◽  
Modern Economic ◽  
Virtuous Cycle

I discuss the health transition in the United States, bringing new data to bear on health indicators and investigating the changing relationship between health, income, and the environment. I argue that scientific advances played an outsize role and that health improvements were largest among the poor. Health improvements were not a precondition for modern economic growth. The gains to health are largest when the economy has moved from “brawn” to “brains” because this is when the wage returns to education are high, leading the healthy to obtain more education. More education may improve use of health knowledge, producing a virtuous cycle. ( JEL H51, I10, J13, N31, N32)

scholarly journals Antebellum U.S. Labor Markets

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joshua L. Rosenbloom
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Economic Growth ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Labor Markets ◽  
The United States ◽  
United States Economy ◽  
Modern Economic Growth ◽  
Rapid Spread ◽  
European Immigration ◽  
The One

The United States economy underwent major transformations between American independence and the Civil War through rapid population growth, the development of manufacturing, the onset of modern economic growth, increasing urbanization, the rapid spread of settlement into the trans-Appalachian west, and the rise of European immigration. These decades were also characterized by an increasing sectional conflict between free and slave states that culminated in 1861 in Southern secession from the Union and a bloody and destructive Civil War. Labor markets were central to each of these developments, directing the reallocation of labor between sectors and regions, channeling a growing population into productive employment, and shaping the growing North–South division within the country. Put differently, labor markets influenced the pace and character of economic development in the antebellum United States. On the one hand, the responsiveness of labor markets to economic shocks helped promote economic growth; on the other, imperfections in labor market responses to these shocks significantly affected the character and development of the national economy.

scholarly journals Sample-Selection Bias and Height Trends in the Nineteenth-Century United States

2019 ◽  
Vol 79 (1) ◽  
pp. 99-138 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ariell Zimran
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Selection Bias ◽  
Sample Selection ◽  
The United States ◽  
Sample Selection Bias ◽  
Birth Cohorts ◽  
Modern Economic Growth ◽  
Modern Economic ◽  
Nineteenth Century United States ◽  
Height Data

After adjusting for sample-selection bias, I find a net decline in average stature of 0.64 inches in the birth cohorts of 1832–1860 in the United States. This result supports the veracity of the Antebellum Puzzle—a deterioration of health during early modern economic growth in the United States. However, this adjustment alters the trend in average stature in the same cohort range, validating concerns over bias in the historical heights literature. The adjustment is based on census-linked military height data and uses a two-step semi-parametric sample-selection model to adjust for selection on observables and unobservables.

Cuba and the Latin American Terms of Trade: Old Theories, New Evidence

2000 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 197-222 ◽  
Author(s):  
Linda K. Salvucci ◽  
Richard J. Salvucci
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Economic Growth ◽  
Latin American ◽  
The United States ◽  
Terms Of Trade ◽  
Historical Evidence ◽  
New Evidence ◽  
Latin American Economic

There is little historical evidence to support the thesis that deteriorating terms of trade hindered Cuban and Latin American economic growth, at precisely the time when large international disparities in income began to emerge (1820s to 1870s). For Cuba at least, it was resurgent Spanish imperialism in the form of new tariffs, taxes, and outright prohibitions that distorted patterns of trade, particularly with the United States. Likewise for Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, and Peru, the terms of trade do not appear to have contributed significantly, if at all, to underdevelopment.

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