Trader Selectivity and Measured Catch-Up Growth of American Slaves

Richard Steckel and Nicolas Ziebarth

The Journal of Economic History, 2016, vol. 76, issue 1, 109-138

Abstract: Critics who doubt the sources and meaning of some four inches of catch-up growth claim that market-based distortions created by slave traders biased measured heights of children and adolescents. Here we analyze this possible bias using a new database of all slave manifests available at the National Archives. Employing procedures to match names of shippers with known or suspected professional traders, we find that biases in height by age due to trader selectivity were negligible relative to the four inches of catch-up growth.

Date: 2016
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/ ... type/journal_article link to article abstract page (text/html)

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:cup:jechis:v:76:y:2016:i:01:p:109-138_00

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in The Journal of Economic History from Cambridge University Press Cambridge University Press, UPH, Shaftesbury Road, Cambridge CB2 8BS UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Kirk Stebbing ().