Richard H Steckel
Dados Biográficos
| ID | 93534 |
|---|---|
| NOME | Richard H Steckel |
| PRENOMES | Richard H |
| SOBRENOME | Steckel |
| ASSINATURA | STECKEL R H |
| AFILIAÇÕES | The Ohio State University |
| VERIFICADO | Não |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 70 |
| TOTAL DE CITAÇÕES | 860 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 69 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 1 |
| PRIMEIRO ANO DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 1978 |
| ANO MAIS RECENTE DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 2021 |
| ÍNDICE H | 16 |
Developmental Origins of Cardiovascular Disease
While many social scientists view heart disease as the outcome of current conditions, this cannot fully explain the significant geographic disparities in cardiovascular disease (CVD) mortality rates in the USA. The developmental origins hypothesis proposes that CVD vulnerability is created by poor conditions in utero that underbuilds major organs relative to those needed to process lush nutrition later in life. The American South underwent an eco…
The Short and the Tall
Over the last four decades, historians and social scientists have become increasingly interested in the way in which information about stature might be used to explore the impact of environmental factors on the physical growth and well-being of past populations. A particular problem encountered by many researchers is that height data is only available for selected populations, typically military recruits or those admitted to correctional institut…
Slave Heights
The new anthropometric history, which blends human biology with history and economics in a form understandable to a general audience, began in the mid-1970s with the study of important questions about American slavery, such as the age of slaves at menarche and their first birth, stature attained relative to other contemporary populations, time trends in stature, and the relationship between mortality and physical growth in childhood. This chapter…
Trader Selectivity and Measured Catch-Up Growth of American Slaves
Critics who doubt the sources and meaning of some four inches of catch-up growth claim that market-based distortions created by slave traders biased measured heights of children and adolescents. Here we analyze this possible bias using a new database of all slave manifests available at the National Archives. Employing procedures to match names of shippers with known or suspected professional traders, we find that biases in height by age due to tr…
Biological Measures of Well-Being
Beginning with Bismarck’s Germany in the late 19th century, nations gave increasing attention to measures of well-being while traveling the path to welfare states of the 20th century. Following the ascent of the germ theory of disease, governments could play a large and cost-effective role in serving public health and national competitiveness. The Great Depression energized the creation of a second important policy tool, national income accounts.…
The hidden cost of moving up
The hidden cost of moving up
OBJECTIVES: The paper tests the thrifty phenotype hypothesis, according to which nonharmonious growth trajectories are costly for adult health. METHODS: The American surge in the prevalence of type 2 diabetes is concentrated in the South, a region characterized by a long history of poverty followed by rapid economic growth beginning in the 1960s. Civil rights legislation further accelerated income growth for African-Americans in the region. The p…
In memory of Robert William Fogel
A Troublesome Statistic
We analyze all slave manifests housed at the National Archives-some 24,400 documents involving approximately 135,000 slaves who were transported in the coastwise trade from 1810 to 1861. The manifests list the name of the owner or shipper, which allows us to match names with traders found in other sources. We also utilize demographic characteristics of the manifests to estimate the probability that a trader organized the shipment. Commercial tran…
Demography and Slavery
This article discusses the demographic history of slavery. It covers the origins of African slavery, dimensions of the African slave trade, distribution of the slave population in 1825, health and mortality of slave populations, plantation conditions in the United States and in the sugar colonies, and fertility
Inequality Amidst Nutritional Abundance
The heights of Plains nomads collected by Franz Boas varied by 9 centimeters, following an inverted U-shape by latitude, a pattern also found among Union Army soldiers born east of the Plains. To understand tribal differences, I bring new explanatory variables to the table in the study of historical heights: proxies for effort prices in hunting and gathering food, including biomass, rainfall estimated from tree rings, and tribal area, as well as …
Heights and human welfare
Biological Measures of the Standard of Living
When economists investigate long-term trends and socioeconomic differences in the standard of living or quality of life, they have traditionally focused on monetary measures such as gross domestic product-which has occupied center stage for over 50 years. In recent decades, however, scholars have increasingly recognized the limitations of monetary measures while seeking useful alternatives. This essay examines the unique and valuable contribution…
Big Social Science History
Social science historians engage in relatively few large, collaborative projects, yet many of their activities, especially data collection and several aspects of analysis, benefit from what economists call economies of scale. Here I briefly review the historical background of big projects, place research by social science historians in perspective relative to other disciplines, and ponder possible explanations for the dearth of collaborative effo…
Big Social Science History
Young adult mortality following severe physiological stress in childhood
Health and Nutrition in Pre-Columbian America
July 01 2005 Health and Nutrition in Pre-Columbian America: The Skeletal Evidence Richard H. Steckel Richard H. Steckel Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Scholar Author and Article Information Richard H. Steckel Online Issn: 1530-9169 Print Issn: 0022-1953 © 2005 Massachusetts Institute of Technology and The Journal of Interdisciplinary History, Inc.2005 The Journal of Interdisciplinary History (2005) 36 (1): 1–32. https:…
"New Light on the "Dark Ages
New Light on the “Dark Ages”
Based on a modest sample of skeletons from northern Europe, average heights fell from 173.4 centimeters in the early Middle Ages to a low of roughly 167 centimeters during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Taking the data at face value, this decline of approximately 6.4 centimeters substantially exceeds any prolonged downturns found during industrialization in several countries that have been studied. Significantly, recovery to levels ach…
Research project
Nutritional Success on the Great Plains
Native Americans have often been portrayed as merely unfortunate victims of European disease and aggression, but data on human stature show-and travelers' accounts and skeletal records confirm-that the equestrian Plains nomads were ingenious, adaptive, and nutritionally successful in the face of exceptional demographic stress. Much of their extraordinary achievement can be attributed to a rich and varied diet, a modest disease load other than epi…
The Backbone of History
For the same reasons that explorers of the early twentieth century strove to reach the poles, and their modern counterparts journey to outer space, most people want to visualize the contours of the human experience - the peaks of adaptive success that led to the expansion of civilization, and the troughs in which human presence ebbed. The Backbone of History defines the emerging field of macrobioarchaeology by gathering skeletal evidence on seven…
A Population History of North America
Journal Article A Population History of North America Get access Haines Michael R. Steckel Richard H.A Population History of North America 2000xxivNew York Cambridge University Press736$75.00, ISBN 0-521-49666-7 Margo Anderson Margo Anderson University of WisconsinMilwaukee, Wisconsin Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American History, Volume 88, Issue 4, March 2002, Pages 1495–1496, https://doi.o…
Skeletal health in the Western Hemisphere from 4000 B.C. to the present
Rising Inequality
This article assembles new data and methods for studying wealth inequality trends in industrializing America. Inequality grew sharply between 1820 and 1850, leveled off, and increased steadily between 1870 and 1900. Inequality grew due to compositional changes in the population, but also grew within occupations, age groups, and the native-born population. Proposed labor-market explanations are inconsistent with the fact that wealth inequality bet…
The Heights of American Slaves
In recent years the nutritional adequacy of the slave diet has received increasing attention from historians. Scholars have analyzed a wide array of sources such as the manuscript censuses of agriculture and population, the ex-slave narratives, diaries, plantation account books, and agricultural and medical journals to shed new light on the quantities, varieties, and nutritional content of foods consumed by slaves (Fogel and Engerman, 1974; Owens…
A Peculiar Population
The debate over the health and nutrition of slaves has focused on the typical working adult. Height and mortality data, however, indicate that the greatest systemativ variation in health and nutrition occured by age. Nourishment was exceedingly poor for slave childrenm but workers were remarkably well fed. The unusayal growth-by-age profile for slaves has implications for views on the postwar economic fortunes of blacks, the interpretation of fin…
Biological Measures of the Standard of Living
When economists investigate long-term trends and socioeconomic differences in the standard of living or quality of life, they have traditionally focused on monetary measures such as gross domestic product-which has occupied center stage for over 50 years. In recent decades, however, scholars have increasingly recognized the limitations of monetary measures while seeking useful alternatives. This essay examines the unique and valuable contribution…
Heights and human welfare
Slave height profiles from coastwise manifests
Heights of Native-Born Whites During the Antebellum Period
This paper uses data on height by age drawn from Civil War muster rolls to analyze the nutritional status of the native-born white population during the antebellum period. Preliminary regression results reveal significant differences in adult heights across occupations, regions, urban-rural and migrant status, and birth cohorts. The economic and demographic implications of these findings are also explored
Heights and Living Standards of English Workers During the Early Years of Industrializations, 1770–1815
We employed data on the heights of English and Irish male convicts transported to Australia to assess the living standards of workers between 1770 and 1815. Falling heights of urban-and rural-born males after 1780 and a delayed growth spurt for 13- to 23-year-old boys revealed declining living standards among English workers during the Industrial Revolution. This conclusion was supported by the fall in English workers' heights relative to that of…
Secular Changes in American and British Stature and Nutrition
Robert W. Fogel, Stanley L. Engerman, Roderick Floud, Gerald Friedman, Robert A. Margo, Kenneth Sokoloff, Richard H. Steckel, T. James Trussell, Georgia Villaflor, Kenneth W. Wachter, Secular Changes in American and British Stature and Nutrition, The Journal of Interdisciplinary History, Vol. 14, No. 2, Hunger and History: The Impact of Changing Food Production and Consumption Patterns on Society (Autumn, 1983), pp. 445-481
Height and Per Capita Income
As an aid to interpreting the results of height-by-age studies this paper investigates the relationship between average height and per capita income. The relationships among income, nutrition, medical care, and height at the individual level suggest that average height is nonlinearly related to per capita income and that the distribution of income is an impotant determinant of average height
New Evidence on the Causes of Slave and Crew Mortality in the Atlantic Slave Trade
The journals of slave ship surgeons of the 1790s are used to address questions on the relative importance of African conditions versus those on ships, crowding, the effectiveness of Dolben's Act, and the interaction between slave and crew health. In contrast with previous work we find that most slaves who died did so near the middle of the voyage. Crowding was important to health and mortality, but the restrictions of Dolben's Act did little to r…
The Age of Slaves at Menarche and Their First Birth
have been leveled at both the methodology and the interpretation of Fogel and Engerman. In this paper we analyze the biases inherent in their methodological procedure, propose a new method of estimation that avoids these biases, and comment on the substantive issue of whether reproductive behavior was substantially manipulated. We consider only the extent of a particular type of manipulation that is admittedly defined in a very narrow way. Beyond…
Nutritional Success on the Great Plains
Native Americans have often been portrayed as merely unfortunate victims of European disease and aggression, but data on human stature show-and travelers' accounts and skeletal records confirm-that the equestrian Plains nomads were ingenious, adaptive, and nutritionally successful in the face of exceptional demographic stress. Much of their extraordinary achievement can be attributed to a rich and varied diet, a modest disease load other than epi…
Skeletal health in the Western Hemisphere from 4000 B.C. to the present
The economic foundations of East-West migration during the 19th century
Tallest in the World
Tallest in the World: Native Americans of the Great Plains in the Nineteenth Century by Richard H. Steckel and Joseph M. Prince. Published in volume 91, issue 1, pages 287-294 of American Economic Review, March 2001
Birth weights and infant mortality among American slaves
"New Light on the "Dark Ages
Rising Inequality
This article assembles new data and methods for studying wealth inequality trends in industrializing America. Inequality grew sharply between 1820 and 1850, leveled off, and increased steadily between 1870 and 1900. Inequality grew due to compositional changes in the population, but also grew within occupations, age groups, and the native-born population. Proposed labor-market explanations are inconsistent with the fact that wealth inequality bet…
Census Matching and Migration
The need for adequate historical migration data in order to examine the economic social political and demographic development of the United States is discussed. The author explains an approach to the data problem that links families sampled from manuscript schedules of the 1860 census with the 1850 census by means of state-level indexes of household heads....The approach proposed in this paper has the following advantages: widespread coverage of …
The Health and Mortality of Women and Children, 1850-1860
I investigate health as determined by nonsurvival in manuscript schedules of families matched in successive censuses. Losses were systematically greater for infants of the unskilled and of residents in large cities; for young children who lived on the frontier or had more young siblings; and for women who lived on the frontier or in the South. The findings have implications for fertility studies based on child-woman ratios, estimation of interreg…
Overpopulation and malnutrition rediscovered
Strategic Ideas in the Rise of the New Anthropometric History and their Implications for Interdisciplinary Research
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A Dreadful Childhood
The Quality of Census Data for Historical Inquiry
Household migration and rural settlement in the United States, 1850–1860
The Economics of U.S. Slave and Southern White Fertility
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
The Age of Slaves at Menarche and Their First Birth
have been leveled at both the methodology and the interpretation of Fogel and Engerman. In this paper we analyze the biases inherent in their methodological procedure, propose a new method of estimation that avoids these biases, and comment on the substantive issue of whether reproductive behavior was substantially manipulated. We consider only the extent of a particular type of manipulation that is admittedly defined in a very narrow way. Beyond…
Slave Mortality
Since the inception of slavery in North America the free population has been concerned with the mortality of the slave population. Slaveowners were concerned with mortality for purposes of estimating the profitability of slave investments. Opponents of slavery and the slave trade used actual and presumed slave mortality experience as arguments for abolishing the system. Death rates were viewed as a measure of demographic performance that reflecte…
Slave Mortality
Slave height profiles from coastwise manifests
Antebellum Southern White Fertility
This paper investigates the decline and regional differential in antebellum southern white fertility using published census materials and the 1860 population schedules. Demographic analysis is conducted with a synthetic total fertility rate that has four components: age at first birth, age at last surviving birth, surviving-child spacing, and the proportion of women who eventually have surviving children. The socioeconomic analysis employs regres…
Slave Marriage and the Family
This article contributes to the literature on slave marriage and the family [in the United States] by analyzing evidence from plantation records and Civil War pension files....The data...reveal seasonal patterns of marriage and birth and the stability of slave unions.... (EXCERPT)
Miscegenation and the American Slave Schedules
Miscegenation and the American Slave Schedules Slave miscegenation is a sensitive subject in southern history. The topic became an issue during the campaign against slavery, when abolitionists charged that sexual exploitation of slaves was widespread. Some abolitionists maintained that slaveowners had turned their plantations into harems. The law of slavery seemed to support, or at least did not contradict, the charges: slaves had no legal recour…
The Heights of American Slaves
In recent years the nutritional adequacy of the slave diet has received increasing attention from historians. Scholars have analyzed a wide array of sources such as the manuscript censuses of agriculture and population, the ex-slave narratives, diaries, plantation account books, and agricultural and medical journals to shed new light on the quantities, varieties, and nutritional content of foods consumed by slaves (Fogel and Engerman, 1974; Owens…
Height and Per Capita Income
As an aid to interpreting the results of height-by-age studies this paper investigates the relationship between average height and per capita income. The relationships among income, nutrition, medical care, and height at the individual level suggest that average height is nonlinearly related to per capita income and that the distribution of income is an impotant determinant of average height
Heights of Native-Born Whites During the Antebellum Period
This paper uses data on height by age drawn from Civil War muster rolls to analyze the nutritional status of the native-born white population during the antebellum period. Preliminary regression results reveal significant differences in adult heights across occupations, regions, urban-rural and migrant status, and birth cohorts. The economic and demographic implications of these findings are also explored
The economic foundations of East-West migration during the 19th century
Secular Changes in American and British Stature and Nutrition
Robert W. Fogel, Stanley L. Engerman, Roderick Floud, Gerald Friedman, Robert A. Margo, Kenneth Sokoloff, Richard H. Steckel, T. James Trussell, Georgia Villaflor, Kenneth W. Wachter, Secular Changes in American and British Stature and Nutrition, The Journal of Interdisciplinary History, Vol. 14, No. 2, Hunger and History: The Impact of Changing Food Production and Consumption Patterns on Society (Autumn, 1983), pp. 445-481
Demographic Dimensions of the New Republic
A Deplorable Scarcity
A Dreadful Childhood
A Peculiar Population
The debate over the health and nutrition of slaves has focused on the typical working adult. Height and mortality data, however, indicate that the greatest systemativ variation in health and nutrition occured by age. Nourishment was exceedingly poor for slave childrenm but workers were remarkably well fed. The unusayal growth-by-age profile for slaves has implications for views on the postwar economic fortunes of blacks, the interpretation of fin…
Birth weights and infant mortality among American slaves
New Evidence on the Causes of Slave and Crew Mortality in the Atlantic Slave Trade
The journals of slave ship surgeons of the 1790s are used to address questions on the relative importance of African conditions versus those on ships, crowding, the effectiveness of Dolben's Act, and the interaction between slave and crew health. In contrast with previous work we find that most slaves who died did so near the middle of the voyage. Crowding was important to health and mortality, but the restrictions of Dolben's Act did little to r…
Growth depression and recovery
Legislation designed to prevent slave smuggling after 1807 created an extra-ordinary set of documents identifying slaves transported in the coastwise trade by name, age, sex height and colour. Slaves fell below the first or second centile of modern height standards as children but recovered during and after adolescence to exceed the 25th centile as adults. This profile differs remarkably from other populations. Poor pre-natal care, early weaning,…
Heights and economic history
Measurements of Swedish soldiers were recorded in muster rolls as early as the 1760s. Results of a sample of these measurements over the period up to 1880 are used as an index of living standards in comparison with perceptions formed from other sources. The most striking contrast concerns the period of the mid-nineteenth century. Among economic historians, those who hold the optimistic view that living standards continuously improved during the m…
Census Matching and Migration
The need for adequate historical migration data in order to examine the economic social political and demographic development of the United States is discussed. The author explains an approach to the data problem that links families sampled from manuscript schedules of the 1860 census with the 1850 census by means of state-level indexes of household heads....The approach proposed in this paper has the following advantages: widespread coverage of …
Overpopulation and malnutrition rediscovered
The Health and Mortality of Women and Children, 1850-1860
I investigate health as determined by nonsurvival in manuscript schedules of families matched in successive censuses. Losses were systematically greater for infants of the unskilled and of residents in large cities; for young children who lived on the frontier or had more young siblings; and for women who lived on the frontier or in the South. The findings have implications for fertility studies based on child-woman ratios, estimation of interreg…
Household migration and rural settlement in the United States, 1850–1860
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