Growing incomes, growing people in nineteenth-century Tasmania

Kris Inwood, Hamish Maxwell-Stewart and Deb Oxley

No 38, CEH Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic History, Research School of Economics, Australian National University

Abstract: The earliest measures of well-being for Europeans born in the Pacific region are heights and wages in Tasmania. Evidence of rising stature survives multiple checks for measurement, compositional and selection bias. The challenges to health and stature seen in other nineteenth-century settler societies (the æantebellum paradoxÆ) are not visible here. There was a strong correlation in Tasmania between stature and per capita GDP. We sketch an interpretation highlighting the role of relatively slow population growth and urbanization, a decline in food cost per family member available from a workerÆs wage, and early recognition of the importance of public health.

Date: 2015-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-evo, nep-gro and nep-his
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