Comparing Population Distributions from bin-Aggregated Sample Data: an Application to Historical Height Data from France

Jean-Yves Duclos, Josée Leblanc and David Sahn

Cahiers de recherche from CIRPEE

Abstract: This paper develops a methodology to estimate the entire population distributions from bin-aggregated sample data. We do this through the estimation of the parameters of mixtures of distributions that allow for maximal parametric flexibility. The statistical approach we develop enables comparisons of the full distributions of height data from potential army conscripts across France's 88 departments for most of the nineteenth century. These comparisons are made by testing for differences-of-means stochastic dominance. Corrections for possible measurement errors are also devised by taking advantage of the richness of the data sets. Our methodology is of interest to researchers working on historical as well as contemporary bin-aggregated or histogram-type data, something that still widely done since much of the information that is publicly available is in that form, often due to restrictions due to political sensitivity and/or confidentiality concerns.

Keywords: Health; health inequality; aggregate data; 19th century France; welfare (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C14 C81 D3 D63 I1 N3 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ecm and nep-his
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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http://www.cirpee.org/fileadmin/documents/Cahiers_2009/CIRPEE09-10.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Comparing population distributions from bin-aggregated sample data: An application to historical height data from France (2015)
Journal Article: Comparing population distributions from bin-aggregated sample data: An application to historical height data from France (2011)
Working Paper: Comparing population distributions from bin-aggregated sample data: An application to historical height data from France (2009)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:lvl:lacicr:0910

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