Health during Industrialization: Evidence from the 19th Century Pennsylvania State Prison System

The use of height data to measure living standards is now a well-established method in economic history. Moreover, a number of core findings in this literature are widely agreed upon. There are still some populations, places, and times, however, for which anthropometric evidence remains thin. One example is African-Americans in the US Northeast and Middle Atlantic states during the 1800s. Here, a new data set is used from the Pennsylvania state prison to track heights of black and white males incarcerated between 1829 and 1909. Throughout the century, and controlling for a number of characteristics, black men in Pennsylvania were shorter than white men. The well-known mid-century height decline confirmed among white men, however, extended to blacks as well.