Stunting and wasting in a growing economy:biological living standards in Portugal,1924-1994

Cermeño, Alexandra L., Nuno Palma and Renato Pistola
Additional contact information
Cermeño, Alexandra L.: Lund University
Renato Pistola: ICS, Universidade de Lisboa
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Alexandra L. Cermeño

CAGE Online Working Paper Series from Competitive Advantage in the Global Economy (CAGE)

Abstract: Portugal’s real income per head grew by a factor of eight during the second half of the twentieth century, a period of fast convergence towards Western European standards of living. We use a new sample of about 2,000 children to document trends in the prevalence of stunting and wasting in the city of Lisbon between 1945 and 1994. We find that stunting and wasting fell quickly in the 1950s and 1960s. This happened for males and females, and for infants (0 to 36 months of age) as well as children (2 to 10 years of age). We additionally use a sample of 17,000 young adult males covering the entire country which shows a similar decrease in the incidence of wasting and stunting, with the expected time lag. We discuss these trends in relation to changes in income and public policy which affected the ontogenetic environment of children.

Keywords: anthropometrics; economic development; poverty; child health JEL Classification: I15; N34; O15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-his
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/research/c ... tions/wp585.2021.pdf

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:cge:wacage:585

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CAGE Online Working Paper Series from Competitive Advantage in the Global Economy (CAGE) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Jane Snape ().