TY - JOUR
T1 - Anthropometric History
T2 - Revisiting What’s in it for Ireland
AU - McLaughlin, Eoin
AU - Colvin, Christopher L.
AU - Blum, Matthias
N1 - Funding Information:
The authors disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article: This work was financially support by the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities and Social Sciences.
Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s) 2020.
PY - 2021/12
Y1 - 2021/12
N2 - This research note updates Cormac Ó Gráda’s (1996) critical review of the literature on the connection between the stature of the Irish, on the one hand, and their health and living standards, on the other. We find most of the anthropometric data sets used in this literature pertain to Irish emigrants rather than those who stayed behind. We therefore argue prison registers are a more appropriate source of anthropometric information. But results derived from these registers need to be handled with caution as prisoners are a selected population. We uncover the various observable selection biases inherent in prison data and track how they change across the second half of the nineteenth century. We find changes in selection into crime across time are more likely to have been due to institutional rather than economic factors.
AB - This research note updates Cormac Ó Gráda’s (1996) critical review of the literature on the connection between the stature of the Irish, on the one hand, and their health and living standards, on the other. We find most of the anthropometric data sets used in this literature pertain to Irish emigrants rather than those who stayed behind. We therefore argue prison registers are a more appropriate source of anthropometric information. But results derived from these registers need to be handled with caution as prisoners are a selected population. We uncover the various observable selection biases inherent in prison data and track how they change across the second half of the nineteenth century. We find changes in selection into crime across time are more likely to have been due to institutional rather than economic factors.
KW - anthropometrics
KW - post-Famine Ireland
KW - prison registers
KW - sample selection bias
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85082968739&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1177/0332489320913179
DO - 10.1177/0332489320913179
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85082968739
SN - 0332-4893
VL - 48
SP - 3
EP - 26
JO - Irish Economic and Social History
JF - Irish Economic and Social History
IS - 1
ER -
