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Height in twentieth-century Chilean men: growth with divergence

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Abstract

This article provides the first series of Chilean adult male height for the whole of the twentieth century. The height of adult males increased by about 5.5 cm during the twentieth century, primarily during the second half of this period. This is the greatest improvement in biological welfare in Chilean history; Chilean males have never been as tall as they are today. Using a sample of around 36,371 individuals, we document the evolution of the average height of Chilean soldiers (male) born from the 1900s to the 1990s. This sample can be safely taken as a good proxy of the average height of Chilean male population for the period under study. We provide an explanation of both the main determinants of physical stature and the rapid increase in height in Chile over this period.

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Fig. 1

Source: Díaz et al. (2016)

Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4

Source: Llorca-Jaña et al. (2020b)

Fig. 5

Source: Llorca-Jaña et al. (2020b)

Fig. 6

Source: Own elaboration from Díaz et al. (2016)

Fig. 7

Source: Own elaboration from Díaz et al. (2016)

Fig. 8

Source: Own elaboration from Díaz et al. (2016)

Fig. 9

Source: Díaz et al. (2016)

Fig. 10

Source: Chile, our data; Baten and Blum (2012) for all others, available at Clio-Infra project (https://clio-infra.eu/). In turn, Baten and Blum (2012) relied mainly on Costa and Steckel (1997) and Komlos (2009) for the USA; on Floud (1994), Van Wieringen (1972), Eurobarometer (1996) and Hatton and Bray (2010) for the Netherlands; on Sandberg and Steckel (1997), Hatton (2009) and Silvertoinen et al. (2001) for Sweden; Kemsley (1951), Clements and Pickett (1957), Hatton (2009), Rosenbaum (1988) and Eurobarometer (1996) for the UK; and on Martínez-Carrión and Pérez-Castejón (1998), Quiroga (1998) and Hatton (2009) for Spain

Fig. 11

Source: Chile, our data; Baten and Blum (2012) for all others, available at Clio-Infra project (https://clio-infra.eu/). In turn, Baten and Blum (2012) relied mainly on Salvatore (2007) for Argentina; López-Alonso and Porras-Condey (2003) for Mexico; Meisel and Vega (2007) for Colombia; and Baten et al. (2009) for Brazil

Fig. 12

Source: Chile, our data; Baten and Blum (2012) for all others, available at Clio-Infra project (https://clio-infra.eu/). In turn, Baten and Blum (2012) relied mainly on Meredith (1971) and data by WHO/UNESCO for Philippines; for Australia on Whitwell et al. (1997) and Australian Bureau of Statistics (1998); for New Zealand on Inwood et al. (2010) and Meredith (1971); for Canada on Cranfield and Inwood (2007); and for South Africa on Laing (1964), Crayen (2006) and Hiernaux (1968)

Fig. 13

Source: http://hdl.handle.net/10622/8FCYOX

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Notes

  1. See Joerg Baten and Kris Inwood, “Proposal preview”, http://wehc2018.org/the-most-dramatic-period-globally-for-the-development-of-the-human-body-the-20th-century/, accessed on 30 November 2018.

  2. The share of nitrate within total exports was about 80% during the 1910s (Cariola and Sunkel 1982).

  3. In 1830 exports accounted for 7% of GDP, while during the 1890s–1910s, this ratio was above 20% (Badía-Miro and Díaz 2017).

  4. By September 1973, CORFO managed to control around 500 industrial, commercial, banking, and other establishments (Lefort 2010; Nazer 2020).

  5. Unfortunately, the share of our sample from the total male population varies over time, with an average of 7% for those in their 20 s and an average of 5% for those in the 17–19 age range. The share of those in their 20 s, the most relevant age group in our sample, reached its highest value in the 1950s (16%) and its lowest share in the 1990s (1.2%).

  6. To show that our sample of soldiers is representative of the whole population, we have compared its literacy and occupational structure to data from the national censuses. Our literacy data refers to the ability to sign only, which is a basic skill, while that available from the censuses refers to the ability to read (and from 1960 to read and write). Although both measures are not the same, a comparison shows that in our data, 88% of the sample was able to sign, while in the 1930 census, for example, 75% of the Chilean population older than 7 years was able to read. In the 1970 and 1982 censuses, this increases to 90% and 92%, respectively (for those older than 10 years). In this respect, our data are fairly representative of the whole country, as far as literacy is concerned. As for occupations, the information we found was not congruent with the jobs classification available in the censuses. Thus, we reclassified occupations from our data and the censuses into six broad categories: professionals; skilled workers; soldiers; students; technicians; and unskilled workers, as shown in “Appendix 2”. Based on these categories, we can conclude that our data are representative of the whole country for this variable too.

  7. We classified the locality of birth as either rural (less than 2000 people) or urban (2000 or over 2000 people), both according to the data from the closest census to the year of birth.

  8. Population density per province was extracted from the national census closest to the year of birth.

  9. https://www.leychile.cl/Navegar?idNorma=241847&buscar=SERVICIO+MILITAR+OBLIGATORIO.

  10. Baten and Blum (2014) estimated that more than 90% of anthropometric studies have relied on conscript or anthropological (not "selective" volunteer or prison) data, as ours does.

  11. We also performed the same visual inspection per decade of birth, and the results were the same.

  12. However, in the empirical analysis we do consider the possibility of truncation at the highest MHR, 165 cm, as well as the most common MHR, 160 cm; results remain the same in both cases.

  13. Eye colour could be taken as another proxy for ethnicity. People with light-coloured eyes probably descended from emigrants from Northern Europe. A recent study shows that, on average, the prevalence of eye colour, either blue or green, in British, German, Danish, and Dutch people is 68%, 73%, 85%, 72%, respectively (Katsara and Nothnagel 2019), while in Chile, brown is the dominant eye colour. Thus, eye colour is another proxy to study the impact of ethnicity (measured through eye pigmentation) on height. Given the strong correlation between eye colour and skin colour, we only consider the latter in our empirical exercise.

  14. We ran a similar regression with the most common MHR, 160 cm, and results remained the same (results upon request).

  15. To analyse regional differences in the rural penalty, we ran a different specification, similar to Table 7 column 2, where we included interaction terms between rural areas and the regions. The results showed soldiers coming from rural areas in the Northern regions were shorter than all other soldiers. No (statistically significant) difference was found among soldiers from Southern regions (results upon request).

  16. We also considered interaction terms between decade of birth, skin colour, and region, respectively. We found no clear result (results upon request).

  17. This level of milk consumption was less than half of the level recommended by the League of Nations Committee (Scriggie 1942).

  18. In 1910, there were 2.3 million heads of cattle in Chile, or 0.7 per person, with the country ranking 14th within Latin America. In Uruguay, Paraguay, and Argentina, the comparable figure was 10.0, 6.8, and 4.3 heads of cattle per person, respectively.

  19. There was a similar situation in Mexico during the Porfiriato (López-Alonso 2015).

  20. Between 1950 and 2005, global meat production increased more than fivefold, with pork, followed by chicken, leading the way (Nierenberg 2005).

  21. The slight decrease in raw average height in the 1940s (Table 2) may be due to population growth that decade, which was higher than in the preceding three decades. This factor could have put pressure on food distribution. There were also many earthquakes during this decade, in 1942, 1943, 1945, 1948, and 1949, affecting several regions of the country.

  22. Dietary habits were seen as crucial to improve the health of families, since it was rightly believed that digestive problems were one of the main causes negatively impacting child mortality. Thus, there were many programs to educate people on these topics (Deichler 2016). It was estimated that in 1893, 40% of all deaths in Chile were due to problems with the digestive system (Sierra and Moore 1895).

  23. However, for a while, vaccination was neither compulsory nor universal, which explains why some epidemics took place. Nonetheless, in the 1890 s, the average annual vaccination was 448 thousand; in the 1920s, it was already nearly 1.5 million (Salinas 1983).

  24. It was estimated that in 1854, there were only 129 medical doctors in Chile, one for every 12,000 inhabitants. This ratio improved to 1 per 3300 inhabitants in 1895, 1 per 1870 inhabitants in 1940, 1 per 983 inhabitants in 1992, reaching 1 for every 646 inhabitants in 2007 (Zárate 2007). In 1865, there were only 29 hospitals in Chile, while in 1950, there were already 178 (Salinas 1983).

  25. In 1924, the Ministry of Hygiene, Work, and Pensions was established. The National Health Service was created in 1952, taking over several institutions already in existence and was considered to be a landmark in Chilean health history. For the first time, medical care was centralised in Chile, and in public ownership. Coverage was universal, and after a few decades, the Chilean population started to enjoy some basic services already available in more developed countries, which resulted in an improvement in many health indicators such as life expectancy and child mortality. Chile became a pioneer in medical care within Latin America (Moreno 2017; Illanes 1993; Núñez and Pérez 2015; Arellano 1985).

  26. In 1938, the Mother & Son Law was passed; this granted universal medical care to all children under 2 years, as well as access to milk, although it had only reached 10% of the population by 1950 (Moreno 2017; Goldsmith 2017).

  27. This was one of the highest rates in the world (Deichler 2016), leading to the creation of the Patronato Nacional de la Infancia (Deichler 2016).

  28. The process by which the pattern of mortality and morbidity is transformed from one of high mortality among children (due to infectious diseases) and episodic famine and epidemic affecting the entire population to one of the degenerative and man-made diseases affecting principally the elderly.

  29. There was a similar situation in other countries of the region, such as Mexico (López-Alonso 2015).

  30. Both infant mortality and height are health proxies, and the direction of causality is not clear. We are grateful to one of this journal’s referees for this point.

  31. Because of the fall in fertility rates, new births received more attention, in per capita terms, than at other times (Raczynski and Oyarzo 1981).

  32. An increase in the share of births from mothers with medium and high levels of education was also observed (Raczynski and Oyarzo 1981).

  33. We thank a referee for this journal for raising this point.

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Acknowledgements

Funding was provided by Consejo Nacional de Innovación, Ciencia y Tecnología (Grant No. Anillos-CONICYT-PIA-SOC180001) and Conicyt (Grant No. Fondecyt Regular 1180005). We are very grateful to the Departamento Cultural, Histórico y de Extensión del Ejército de Chile (DCHEE), in particular to Colonel Eduardo Villalón, Major Rodrigo Arredondo, Commander Pedro Hormazábal, Claudia Arancibia, Camila Pesse, Raúl Carrasco, Enrique Lorca, Christian Capstick, Manuel Madrid, Francisco Alarcón Parra, and Dora Basoalto, as well as Katharine Wilson and participants of the WEHC 2018, where an early version of this paper was presented.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Universidad de Santiago de Chile, Santiago, Chile

    Federico Droller

  2. Universidad de Valparaiso, Valparaíso, Chile

    Manuel Llorca-Jaña, Juan Navarrete-Montalvo, Martina Allende & Javier Rivas

  3. Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez, Santiago, Chile

    Roberto Araya-Valenzuela

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  1. Manuel Llorca-Jaña
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  2. Juan Navarrete-Montalvo
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  3. Roberto Araya-Valenzuela
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  4. Federico Droller
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  5. Martina Allende
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  6. Javier Rivas
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Correspondence to Manuel Llorca-Jaña.

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Appendices

Appendix 1

See Table 8.

Table 8 Raw average height of Chilean soldiers per decade of birth, for those aged between 20 and 55
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Appendix 2

See Table 9.

Table 9 Occupations in the censuses of 1907, 1920 and 1930, and in our sample, per broad categories
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Llorca-Jaña, M., Navarrete-Montalvo, J., Araya-Valenzuela, R. et al. Height in twentieth-century Chilean men: growth with divergence. Cliometrica 15, 135–166 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11698-020-00205-2

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