Health and Welfare during IndustrializationRichard H. Steckel, Roderick Floud In this unique anthology, Steckel and Floud coordinate ten essays that bring a new perspective to inquiry about standard of living in modern times. These papers are arranged for international comparison, and they individually examine evidence of health and welfare during and after industrialization in eight countries: the United States, Britain, Sweden, the Netherlands, France, Germany, Japan, and Australia. The essays incorporate several indicators of quality of life, especially real per capita income and health, but also real wages, education, and inequality. And while the authors use traditional measures of health such as life expectancy and mortality rates, this volume stands alone in its extensive use of new "anthropometric" data—information about height, weight and body mass index that indicates changes in nations' well-being. Consequently, Health and Welfare during Industrialization signals a new direction in economic history, a broader and more thorough understanding of what constitutes standard of living. |
Contents
1 | |
1 The Standard of Living Debate in International Perspective Measures and Indicators | 17 |
2 LongTerm Trends in Health Welfare and Economic Growth in the United States | 47 |
3 Health Height and Welfare Britain17001980 | 91 |
4 Was Industrialization Hazardous to Your Health? Not in Sweden | 127 |
5 Economic Welfare and Physical WellBeing in France 17501990 | 161 |
6 Health and Welfare of Women in the United Kingdom 17851920 | 201 |
7 Differential Structure Differential Health Industrialization in Japan 18681940 | 251 |
8 Heights and Living Standards in Germany 18501939 The Case of Württemberg | 285 |
9 Paradoxes of Modernization and Material WellBeing in the Netherlands during the Nineteenth Century | 331 |
10 Height Health and Economic Growth in Australia 18601940 | 379 |
11 Conclusions | 423 |
Contributors | 451 |
453 | |
461 | |
Common terms and phrases
adult agricultural anthropometric anthropometric history areas Australia average height birth cohorts body mass index born Britain British capita income changes conscripts consumption convict countries death rate decline disease distribution Dutch early economic growth England English estimates evidence expectancy at birth figures Floud France GDP per capita Germany growth rate height standards Human Development Human Development Index improvement increase indicators industrial revolution infant mortality Irish Japan Komlos labor force living standards male measures median height modern Mokyr mortality rates moving average national income Netherlands Newgate Newgate Prison nineteenth century occupational percent percentage period population public health real income real per capita real wages regions relative Research RSMLE rural sample sector social Source standard of living statistics stature Steckel Sweden tion trends twentieth century U.S. dollars Union Army United Kingdom urban waist-hip ratio welfare women workers Wurttemberg
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