Bones of Contention: The Political Economy of Height Inequality
65 Pages Posted: 10 Mar 2009 Last revised: 16 Mar 2009
Date Written: July 1, 2007
Abstract
A growing literature in politics and economics employs measures of the height and health condition of human beings to gauge the level of well-being and income across societies and over time. We use both archeological data of skeletal remains and actual records of heights (collected by armies, anthropologists) to measure the degree of variance in the distribution of heights, and therefore, the degree of inequality since prehistoric times. We find that the type of economy and the type of political institutions strongly covary with our measures of inequality.
Keywords: height, inequality, economic development
JEL Classification: D70, I11, I31, 040
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation
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