Family Size, Household Wealth and Socio-economic Status Across the Body Mass Index Distribution During US Economic Development

Scott Alan Carson

Journal of Interdisciplinary Economics, 2021, vol. 33, issue 2, 147-166

Abstract: Households behave systematically in family planning and intra-household resource allocation. A neglected area in historical health studies is the relationship between body mass index (BMI), health and family size. Using robust statistics and a large nineteenth-century BMI data set, this study uses an overlapping generations model to explain resource allocation within the household and illustrates that there is a positive relationship across the BMI distribution with family size. There is also a positive relationship between BMIs and average wealth, and an inverse relationship between BMI and inequality. After controlling for family size and wealth characteristics, there was a positive relationship between BMI and worker’s agricultural rural status. JEL: N3, D1, I1

Keywords: Family economics; body mass index; wealth and inequality (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0260107921989908 (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:sae:jinter:v:33:y:2021:i:2:p:147-166

DOI: 10.1177/0260107921989908

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Journal of Interdisciplinary Economics
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().