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Anthropometric evidence on economic growth, biological well-being and regional convergence in the Habsburg Monarchy, c. 1850–1910

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Abstract

We examine secular trends in biological well-being in the Habsburg Monarchy circa 1850–1910 on the basis of evidence on the physical stature of recruits disaggregated at the regional level. We find that heights stagnated generally among the 1850s birth cohorts. The secular increase in heights that lasted until the twenty-first century began among the 1860s birth cohorts. Men born in the more developed Czech and Austria areas were as tall as many populations in Western Europe, whereas the men born in the Polish/Ukrainian provinces were about as tall as the Mediterranean populations. There was a 3.3 cm gap between the heights of men living in the core versus periphery of the Monarchy, which reflects a substantial gap in biological living standards. We also consider spatial convergence of biological living standards. Heights did not converge across the different provinces of the Monarchy at all in the 1850s, diverged in the 1860s, and began to converge subsequently. Convergence was more rapid among those born in the 1880s than among the cohorts of the 1870s, even though the average rate of increase in heights was greater in the 1870s than in the 1880s. The convergence was limited to the peripheral regions (Polish/Ukrainian, Romanian, and Slovakian). No convergence was evident among the Austrian, Czech, Hungarian or Croatian areas. By the end of the period under consideration the gap between Austrian and Polish/Ukrainian heights was reduced to 1.5 cm. The evidence on heights is quite similar to the evidence on GDP growth insofar as it points to some positive elements but is by no means uniformly favorable. The Monarchy was not stagnating, or about to collapse on the eve of World War I on account of economic considerations as the Soviet Union did, but it was also not among the high-achievers of the era as the Scandinavian countries or Germany.

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Notes

  1. He also finds that CV measured at the individual level was higher in towns and in industrial regions than in the rural countryside.

  2. The number of men measured in 1871 was 506,377.

  3. In contrast, the height of 21-year-old (1863–1868) refers only to those who were rejected at the first examination at age 20 the previous year. Hence, their height is not representative of all 21 years old in the population.

  4. The heights are given in 13 (until recruitment year 1876 and ten thereafter) height categories in the first recruitment system, seven categories in the second system, and eight height categories in the third system. Mean heights were calculated assuming that the heights pertained to the middle of the height category.

  5. About 80% were rejected again at the second inspection, and 80% were rejected again at the third call. Hence, about half of any cohort ended up eventually in the military. Presumably the rejection rates did not depend entirely on the physical conditions of the recruits but on the needs of the military as well.

  6. In 1890, the rejection rates were 73, 85, and 55% for the first, second, and third calls, respectively. Hence the rejection rate of that cohort decreased to about 1/3, and 2/3 ended up in the military.

  7. The Hungarian average is lowered by the inclusion of men from Slovakia. Subsequently, the average height of Hungarian men increased when data on Slovakian men were reported separately beginning with the recruiting year 1883.

  8. The height of the Spanish and Portuguese populations could have been on par with that of the Polish men. The height of Portuguese conscripts born in the 1880s was 163.2 cm and that of Spanish recruits born in 1874 was 162.6 cm (Quiroga-Valle 1998; Padez 2003). Some regions in these countries had even shorter populations: mean heights of the 1850s birth cohorts in Castille and Leon was about 159.6 cm and that in Southeastern Spain was about 161.3 cm (Martínez-Carrión and Moreno-Lázaro 2007). Conscripts born in Sardinia in the early twentieth century were about 163 cm tall (Arcaleni 2006).

  9. Heights changed abruptly with the 1,876 recruitment, as the measurements were changed from Austrian inches (1 Zoll = 2.634 cm) to cm and the number of bins were decreased from 13 to 10. In order to circumvent this artefact the growth rates were calculated for birth cohorts 1849–1855 and separately for 1856–1862. Subsequently, the two growth rates were averaged. These are the rates reported in Table 3, column 1.

  10. Coefficient of variation is the standard deviation (SD) divided by the mean. In this context the CV refers to the SD of heights across the 15 districts divided by the mean height in the Monarchy.

  11. Calculating the correlation coefficient between initial heights and the change in height is tantamount to doing the regression equation in levels.

  12. The term “β-convergence” is used in the growth literature, where \( {\lambda = - {\left( {{\rm{1}} - {\rm{e}}^{{ - {\rm{10}}\beta }} } \right)}} \), where β is the rate of convergence per annum: \( {\beta = {{ - \ln (1 + \lambda )} \over {10}}} \) (Barro and Sala-i-Martin 1992, p. 230, 1995, p. 387; Basssino 2006, p. 80) and λ is estimated for a decade.

  13. The change from the first half of the period to the second half is due to changes in the reporting procedure.

  14. The range of heights between the tallest and shortest regions remained at 4.5–4.9 cm in the 1860s (Table 2).

  15. If there had been some convergence, the correlation would have been negative and significant.

  16. The correlation at the country level between initial heights and growth in heights is −0.84 (N = 7) and is significant (p = 0.02) for 1869–1879, and is −0.53 but insignificant (p = 0.22) for 1879–1889. For the two decades taken together the correlation at the country level is −0.74 and is significant (p = 0.06).

  17. These growth rates are two orders of magnitudes smaller than the growth rates of GDP in the advanced industrial countries in the twentieth century (Jones 1998, p. 58).

  18. The interpretation of the coefficient of ln Hi, λ is however, different from that in the growth literature. This is the case inasmuch as in the growth theory example of Barro and Sala-i-Martin (2002) output per worker does not have a steady state. It converges to a balanced growth path. Only output per effective worker has a steady state. Hence, when growth convergence occurs at a rate of 2% per year, they mean convergence to that steady state growth path, not to some steady state level of output per worker. In contrast, height ought to converge to a steady state level where no further growth is possible. I thank Brian A’Hearn for bringing this point to my attention.

  19. One can also solve for the level of heights that makes predicted growth zero. The steady state level of height in the Habsburg Monarchy that would have been predicted on the basis of the period 1869–1879 is 175.3 cm. This is an under-prediction as Czech boys age 17 were 180.3 cm in 2001 (Vignérova et al. 2006), and young men in Austria are 179.4 cm tall (Eurostat 2001).

  20. Those districts that were 1 cm below the mean would have grown by about 0.126 cm (1.26 mm) faster during the decade than average.

  21. 1/0.127 = 7.9 (decades).

  22. These are again very close to the increases calculated on the basis of the weighted averages of heights 0.94 and 0.48 cm (Table 3).

  23. While districts that were 1 cm below the mean would have grown 0.187 cm faster.

  24. Given that Polish heights were still 1.5 cm shorter than that of Austrian recruits in the recruitment year 1910, this growth rate implies that at that rate the height of Polish men would have taken c. 108 years to catch up to those of Austrians provided the growth rates would have been constant. About 0.278 cm is per two decades and 1.5/0.278 = 5.4 and 5.4 × 20 = 108.

  25. Share of gap not yet eliminated = 100/eβt, or ln (2)/β = t.

  26. Encompassing the seven military districts of Vienna, Gratz, Innsbruck, Prague, Josefstadt, Zagreb, Pest. Note that the Pest military district did not include the regions that eventually became Slovakia and Romania.

  27. These results are not reported here.

  28. These seven military districts included the Romanian (Transylvanian) districts of Temesvar and Hermannstadt, the Polish (Galician) districts Lemberg, Krakau, and Przemysl, and the Slovak districts of Kaschau and Pressburg.

  29. At the 1869–1879 rate it would have taken 11.4 years to eliminate half the gap, while at the 1879–1889 rate it would have taken 5.7 years.

  30. Population was about 21 million in the Kingdom of Hungary and about 28 million in the other part of the Monarchy.

  31. Although height correlates highly with the crude death rate that is used by Good as a proxy variable, the correlation is not perfect.

  32. If the asymptotic upper bound of heights was the same for the populations of all provinces, and if there were diminishing returns to nutritional status, which were probable, then one would expect the shorter populations to grow faster in physical stature unless growth in food intake proceeded at a slower pace. The comparable principle in economic growth theory is that “The further an economy is below its steady state, the faster the economy should grow” (Jones 1998, p. 62).

  33. Per capita of the agricultural labor force, not of the population.

  34. Per capita income was about 8% higher in present day Hungary than in the rest of the Kingdom. So it is entirely plausible that Hungarian heights were above those of Slovakia and Romania (Fellner 1923).

  35. ρ = 0.07 and is insignificant (p = 0.88). The relationship appears positive as expected for Austria, Czech, Slovakia, and Poland, but for Hungary Romania and Croatia the estimated GDP growth is higher than one would expect on the basis of height growth.

  36. Income data are from Maddison (2001, p. 60, 61, 67, 71, 76, 94). Those countries are included for which both income and height data are available: US, Australia, Norway, Sweden, Württemberg, England, Denmark, Austria, Czech Republic, The Netherlands, France, Russia, Hungary, Romania, Italy, Spain, and Poland.

  37. Good, “The Economic Rise,” p. 148.

  38. On the basis of his first estimated growth rates there is not a good relationship between the estimated growth rates in GDP 1870–1910 and the increase in heights (%) 1869–1889. The correlation is negative (ρ = −0.35) and insignificant (p = 0.44).

  39. This is indicated by the estimate of coefficient for an Eq. 1 type regression for income in the successor states (Good 1994, p 879) −0.16 and is significant at the 10% level (one-tailed t-test).

  40. After World War II life expectancy has been converging around the globe even though income has not been (Kenny 2005).

  41. The values given in Fig. 1 of Bassino (2006) should be divided by 100 to be comparable to the values reported here.

  42. The estimates of CV by occupation for Spain were about 0.008 in the late nineteenth century increasing to 0.009 among the birth cohorts of the early twentieth century (Quiroga and Coll 2000, Fig. 4).

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Acknowledgments

Comments by Jörg Baten, Marek Brabec, Francesco Cinnirella, Scott Eddie, and Michal Jerzmanowski on an earlier version of the paper are gratefully acknowledged without implicating them in any way in the results reported here.

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  1. Department of Economics, University of Munich, Ludwigstraße 33/IV, 80539, Munich, Germany

    John Komlos

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Table 11

Table 11 Names of towns and regions in different languages
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Komlos, J. Anthropometric evidence on economic growth, biological well-being and regional convergence in the Habsburg Monarchy, c. 1850–1910. Cliometrica 1, 211–237 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11698-007-0013-5

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