Socioeconomic status and physical stature in 19th-century Bavaria

Abstract

We present analyses of 19th-century Bavarian conscript records, which cover the whole male population at age 21 and which are unusually rich in content. They include not only occupations of the conscripts, but that of the parents alike, and also the wealth of the conscripts, other family characteristics and their diseases at the time of the conscription. This enables us to investigate the relationship between the conscripts' and the parents' socioeconomic status as well as their effects on the height of the conscripts. Overall, the conscripts' occupations match that of their parents rather well, and deviations can mainly be attributed to their young age. However, we also find significant height differences between the occupational groups of the conscripts even after controlling for the parents' occupations. This could be caused by a reverse effect of height on occupational advancements, but as conscripts doing manual work are generally shorter than those with non-manual occupations irrespective of their rank, we assume that the working conditions of the adolescents and young men actually influenced their growth. © 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.