The Role of Height

Abstract

The rationale for the analyses using height presented earlier was a methodological one. Height has most of the characteristics which are desirable in classificatory schema, and the intention was to show that the failure of the SCS to measure up to those requirements detracted from its empirical value. Of course, we were aware that height does discriminate a range of socio-biological variables and that, at least in perinatal epidemiology, it accounts for a large proportion of the variation generally attributed to social class (see Butler and Alberman, 1969). However, we were also aware that it had no pretensions to be a measure of social status; there was certainly no respectable prior theory of social structure that would suggest the use of anthropometric data (pace Galton, Pearson and the whole eugenicist gang).