Family structure and childhood anthropometry in Saint Paul, Minnesota in 1918

The impact of welfare on maternal investment and sibling competition: evidence from Serbian Roma communities

Siblings compete for limited parental resources, which can result in a trade-off between family size and child growth outcomes. Welfare incentives may improve parental circumstances in large families by compensating for the additional costs of an extra child and increasing the resources available to a family. The improvements in conditions may influence parents to increase their investment, expecting greater returns from the investment in child survival and development, while in turn increase sibling competition for the investment. This study assessed whether welfare benefits have influenced parental investment trade-offs and competition between siblings among Serbian Roma, a population largely dependent on welfare. Using data from the UNICEF Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey 6, this study assessed the associations between maternal investment, child cash benefits, sibship size, and child anthropometry, as an indicator of health, among 1096 Serbian Roma children aged 0 to 59 months. Living in a small family benefited Roma children, while the incentives increased competition between siblings. Maternal investment was negatively associated with incentives, as the improvements brought about were insufficient to influence a change in maternal perceptions about the local setting uncertainty and thus promote an increase in investment.

Childhood Growth and Socioeconomic Outcomes in Early Adulthood Evidence from the Inter-War United States

Childhood malnutrition and its later life effects were important concerns in European and North American social policy in the early twentieth century. However, there have been few studies of the long-term socioeconomic consequences of malnutrition in childhood. We use a unique longitudinal dataset to provide credible causal estimates of the effects of childhood nutrition on early-adult educational and employment outcomes. Our dataset includes 2,499 children in Saint Paul, Minnesota who were weighed and measured in a national children's health survey in 1918/1919 at 0-6 years of age. We observe those same people in the 1920, 1930 and 1940 U.S. censuses allowing us to measure childhood socioeconomic status (1920), adolescent school attendance (1930) and early-adult wages, and employment and educational attainment (1940). Examining variation between biological siblings, we are able to obtain credibly causal estimates of the relationship between childhood stature and weight and later life outcomes, largely canceling out the bias otherwise resulting from their joint correlation with genes and socioeconomic background. Because the initial survey located children within households, we identify the effect of differences in early childhood nutrition from differences between male siblings. Consistent with contemporary evidence from developing countries we find that being taller and heavier in early childhood is associated with better educational and labor market outcomes. Identifying all effects within families to control for socioeconomic background and family structure we find a standard deviation increase in BMI in early childhood was associated with a 3% increase in weekly earnings and that boys who were heavier for their age at the initial survey were 10% less likely to be unemployed in 1940. Taken together, these results confirm the importance of investments in early life health for later-life outcomes.

Sibship Size, Height and Cohort Selection: A Methodological Approach

This article deals with the historical relationship between the number of siblings in a family or household and height, a proxy for biological living standards. Ideally, this relationship is better assessed when we have evidence on the exact number of siblings in a family from its constitution onwards. However, this generally requires applying family reconstitution techniques, which, unfortunately, is not always possible. In this latter case, scholars must generally settle for considering only particular benchmark years using population censuses, from which family and household structures are derived. These data are then linked to the height data for the young males of the family or household. Height data are generally obtained from military records. In this matching process, several decisions have to be taken, which, in turn, are determined by source availability and the number of available observations. Using data from late 19th-century Catalonia, we explore whether the methodology used in matching population censuses and military records as described above might affect the relationship between sibship size and biological living standards and, if so, to what extent. We conclude that, while contextual factors cannot be neglected, the methodological decisions made in the initial steps of research also play a role in assessing this relationship.

Association of number of siblings, birth order, and thinness in 3- to 12-year-old children: a population-based cross-sectional study in Shanghai, China

Background

Sibship size and structure have a significant association with overweight and obesity in children, but the relationship with thinness has not been fully studied and understood, especially in Asia. This study evaluated the associations among number of siblings, birth order, and childhood thinness and investigated the association of number of younger or older siblings with childhood thinness.

Methods

In this study, we performed a population-based cross-sectional study among 84,075 3- to 12-year-old children in Shanghai using multistage stratified cluster random sampling. We defined grades 1, 2, and 3 thinness according to the body mass index cutoff points set by the International Obesity Task Force and used multinomial logistic regression models to estimate the odds ratio (OR) and 95% confidence interval (95% CI).

Results

Compared with only children, for boys, children with two or more siblings were more likely to suffer from grade 2 (OR = 1.29, 95% CI 1.02, 1.64) and grade 3 thinness (OR = 1.60, 95% CI 1.07, 2.40); and the youngest child faced a higher risk of grade 2 (OR = 1.44, 95% CI 1.09, 1.90) and grade 3 thinness (OR = 1.53, 95% CI 1.01, 2.33). For girls, children with one sibling were more likely to suffer from grade 1 thinness (OR = 1.22, 95% CI 1.05, 1.42); the oldest child, middle child, and youngest child faced a higher risk of grade 1 (OR = 1.42, 95% CI 1.09, 1.84), grade 2 (OR = 1.26, 95% CI 1.03, 1.54), and grade 1 thinness (OR = 1.87, 95% CI 1.21, 2.88) respectively. There was no statistically significant relationship, however, between a larger number of younger or older siblings and childhood thinness.

Conclusions

Regardless of sex, having either siblings or a higher birth order was positively associated with childhood thinness. The present study has suggested that future interventions to prevent childhood thinness should consider family background as an important factor, especially in multi-child-families.

Homemakers and heights. Intra-household resource allocation and male stature in the Netherlands, 1860-1930

In this article we test the hypothesis that the secular increase in heights in the course of the second half of the nineteenth century was associated with the rise of the breadwinner-homemaker household. In these 'modern' households, women raised the living standards (quality and quantity of food, hygiene and care) for all members, especially the children. We model the assumed contributions to the family budget by age and gender of household members, and find that a strong imbalance between consumers and producers in the household put severe strains on effective resource allocation, leading to lower net nutrition and lower young adult heights. We suggest a carefully calibrated consumer/producer ratio as an indicator to capture these effects. The ratio is not meant to replace others, and we show that sibling rank order as well as gender preferences also played a role in intra-household resource allocation. For our research, we have used a database with reconstructed life histories (including co-residence) of 3003 Dutch army recruits. Our results indicate that the consumer/producer ratio as experienced by recruits in their early life indeed had a strong impact (-1,8 cm) on their heights. However, this effect differed by social class, which can be explained by differences in acceptance of the income pooling model.

"Big data" in economic history

Big data is an exciting prospect for the field of economic history, which has long depended on the acquisition, keying, and cleaning of scarce numerical information about the past. This article examines two areas in which economic historians are already using big data - population and environment - discussing ways in which increased frequency of observation, denser samples, and smaller geographic units allow us to analyze the past with greater precision and often to track individuals, places, and phenomena across time. We also explore promising new sources of big data: organically created economic data, high resolution images, and textual corpora.