On the road to industrialization: nutritional status in Saxony, 1690–1850

Francesco Cinnirella

Cliometrica, Journal of Historical Economics and Econometric History, 2008, vol. 2, issue 3, 229-257

Abstract: Saxony was one of the pioneer regions in the German modern economic growth. We analyze the Saxon nutritional status to infer the effects of early industrialization on the population standard of living. We find that the nutritional status in the eighteenth century was relatively high and heights fluctuated mainly because of wars. From the 1770s the average nutritional status declined steadily, with the exception of the Napoleonic period, until the mid of the nineteenth century. The decline, particularly accentuated after 1815, is related to the high share of urbanization, the increase in the relative price of food, and the strong dependence on food imports.

Keywords: Heights; Nutritional status; Biological standard of living; Industrial revolution (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: N33 N43 N54 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2008
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (17)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.springerlink.com/content/n8043n72x4734r ... 4c3c259b1083eb3&pi=3 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to journal subscribers

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:afc:cliome:v:2:y:2008:i:3:p:229-257

Access Statistics for this article

Cliometrica, Journal of Historical Economics and Econometric History is currently edited by Claude Diebolt, Dora Costa and Jean-Luc Demeulemeester

More articles in Cliometrica, Journal of Historical Economics and Econometric History from Association Française de Cliométrie (AFC) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().