Toddlers, teenagers, and terminal heights: the importance of puberty for male adult stature, Flanders, 1800–76

Abstract

Does adult stature capture conditions at birth or at some other stage in the growth cycle? Anthropometrics is lauded as a method for capturing net nutritional status over all the growing years. However, it is frequently assumed that conditions at birth were most influential. Was this true for historical populations? This article examines the heights of Flemish men born between 1800 and 1876 to tease apart which moments of growth were most sensitive to disruption and reflected in final heights. It exploits two proximate crises in 1846–9 and 1853–6 as shocks that permit age effects to be revealed. These are affirmed through a study of food prices and death rates. Both approaches suggest a shift of the critical moment away from the first few years of life and towards the adolescent growth spurt as the most influential on terminal stature. Furthermore, just as height is accumulated over the growing years, conditions influencing growth need to be understood cumulatively. Economic conditions at the time of birth were not explanatory, but their collective effects from ages 11 to 18 years were strongly influential. At these ages, both health and nutrition mattered, to varying degrees. Teenagers, rather than toddlers, should be our guides to the past.

Height and Inequality in Spain: A Long-Term Perspective

“…Our results indicate that the influence of such environmental conditions on height must be taken into account in a cumulative manner and not simply departing from one of the critical periods for physical growth (i.e., early infancy). Aside from infancy, in line with a growing body of literature which emphasises the consequences of environmental disruptions on the adolescent growth spurt (Bogin 2013;Hirvonen 2014;Beekink and Kok 2017;Depauw and Oxley 2018), this work demonstrates the major role that pre-adolescent and adolescent living conditions may play in explaining the results of the final height a cohort attains in adulthood. We believe that this is particularly the case of developing societies and/or low-income contexts at both macro-and micro-levels.…”

The Short and the Tall: Comparing Stature and Socioeconomic Status for Male Prison and Military Populations

“…Thereafter, the penalty associated with earlier life lessened, disappearing altogether by age 23. These results lend some support to the argument that conditions experienced in adolescence might ameliorate the impact of earlier life insults (Depauw and Oxley 2018). The availability of cheap food in the Australian colonies may have meant that young men of all backgrounds could draw on sufficient resources to live well.…”

Inequality and Well-Being in Iberian and Latin American Regions Since 1820. New Approaches From Anthropometric History

“… 5 Recent historical studies emphasize puberty as a decisive phase in the growth process, see Beekink and Kok (2017); Cañabate-Cabezuelos and Martínez-Carrión (2017); Depauw and Oxley (2018). …”