Did family size affect differences in body height in non-urbanized societies? Evidence from the Lemko community in Poland in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries

Abstract

The aim of this study was to examine the effect of economic changes in the Polish territories under Austrian partition at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries on the trend in adult body height, and to examine the effect of number of children in a family, as a socioeconomic factor, on the differences in heights of males and females. Data collected in a 1939 survey for a group of 350 Lemkos living in Polish lands under the Austrian partition were obtained from archive material. Individual data were obtained for body height and number of siblings, to calculate family size. Linear regression analysis confirmed an increase in body height in males by about 1.2 cm per decade over the period 1860 to 1922. The number of children in a family did not appear to influence the mean body height of men and women. The observed positive mean body height trend probably resulted from the improvement in the economic conditions in the Austrian sector over the survey period.

In utero undernourishment during WWII: Effects on height and weight of young adult women

“…The results were consistent with a previous analysis which showed that young adult heights of Polish women born during the war were about 2 cm shorter and attained menarche later than those born before and after the WWII (Liczbińska et al 2017(Liczbińska et al , 2019. This study, however, focused on dates of birth and did not take into consideration the potential influence of pregnancies that spanned only part of the war.…”

“…Unfortunately, information on birth weight was not available for the women in the present analysis. Earlier analyses (Liczbińska et al 2017(Liczbińska et al , 2019 have shown that heights of young adult women born before, during and after WWII were related to father's level of education.…”

“…Secular trends in the heights of the Polish population from the 19 th century to modern times have been widely discussed (Bielicki and Szklarska 1999;Czapla and Liczbińska 2014;Czapla et al 2019;Kołodziej et al 2015;Łopuszańska-Dawid et al 2019). The positive secular trend in height was interrupted during conditions associated with WWI and WWII, but was re-established after WWII: 195519671975=160.39 cm (Górny and Dobrzańska 1981).…”