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Why are people getting healthier?
The New York Times runs an excellent article. It is often forgotten how sick people used to be:
[Robert Fogel and colleagues] discovered that almost everyone of the Civil War generation was plagued by life-sapping illnesses, suffering for decades. And these were not some unusual subset of American men — 65 percent of the male population ages 18 to 25 signed up to serve in the Union Army. “They presumably thought they were fit enough to serve,” Dr. Fogel said.
Even teenagers were ill. Eighty percent of the male population ages 16 to 19 tried to sign up for the Union Army in 1861, but one out of six was rejected because he was deemed disabled.
Heart disease rates and even cancer rates (per age cohort, I believe) were higher in times past.
The big question, of course, is why people are so much healthier (or for that matter smarter, see the Flynn Effect). It seems to be more than just better nutrition and sanitation. Scientists are focusing on time in the womb plus the first two years of life. Children born during the 1918 pandemic, for instance, fare much worse later in life in terms of health. The hypothesis is that the poor health of their mothers programmed them for later troubles.
The Netherlands is a land of giants. The people look quite healthy, despite high reported rates of disability. Average height is 6'1" or 6'2". And the Dutch are growing taller quickly. Why? Is it lots of Gouda cheese for Mommy? The mayonnaise on the french fries? Do small families play a role? The Protestants of the northern Netherlands are taller than the Catholics of the south. And if it is the cycling, are the teenagers in Davis, CA tall as well?
Posted by Tyler Cowen on July 30, 2006 at 03:08 AM in Medicine | Permalink
Comments
Sure people are getting healthier overall when you consider certain diseases. But it is just like a balloon, you squeeze something to a pinch here and somewhere else a bubble appears.
What about pollution related and lifestyle related diseases? Overall governments are finding out that they have to spend a lot on people who are NOT healthier, and this anomalous behaviour is increasing.
Posted by: Amit Kulkarni at Jul 30, 2006 5:15:46 AM
The Dutch express affection via feeding. If you turn up at a Dutch person's house late at night they'll
often cook you a complete meal. I know my father does. Perhaps this explains Dutch growth? And although
the food often seems high in fat, I'm sure that it more nutritious than what the average American eats.
After all, once your Grandmother is through feeding you what feels like enough calories to sustain an
entire Indian village, you simply won't feel like snacking on junk food.
Posted by: Ronald Brak at Jul 30, 2006 5:33:10 AM
Dutch agriculture is extremely intensive. I suspect that the Dutch are tall because of all the growth hormones they have been feeding to their cow, pigs, and chicken ;)
Posted by: Lars Smith at Jul 30, 2006 7:20:01 AM
nutrition, especially fat content in the food is highly connected to height. Remember when Asian people were all though of as small? Third generation Asians in America are huge compared to their grandparents.
This is part of the reason that ancient peoples found it so hard to throw off the yoke of bondage to their warrior elites. Not only did the warrior caste have the weapons, armor, and training. But they ate better and were just larger, stronger, and healthier.
Posted by: kyle8 at Jul 30, 2006 9:21:29 AM
There's a very good New Yorker article about height and health in Europen and America here http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?040405fa_fact.
Posted by: Andrew Smith at Jul 30, 2006 11:09:47 AM
In Europe, at least, people during the Middle Ages were close in height to people today, as determined from skeletal remains. It was during the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries that statures were quite short, probably related to the increase in urbanization during that period. Source.
Posted by: Peter at Jul 30, 2006 11:11:50 AM
One more thing ... regarding the high "disability" rates in the Netherlands, this sentence from your prior article explains it all:
...disability leave...can be taken at full salary for a year and, after a single day's work, is renewable for another year, and so on indefinitely.
Posted by: Peter at Jul 30, 2006 11:15:18 AM
I understand dieting is quite popular in North America even amoung children. I wonder if this results in
Americans being shorter than what they would be otherwise? It might also explain why Americans are so fat
if the body reacts to semi-starvation by packing on more pounds.
Posted by: Ronald Brak at Jul 30, 2006 11:41:59 AM
This is interesting, because other studies have shown that stress is actually good for organism growth. Below a certain threshold toxins are beneficial to the growth in agriculture.
If you have access to Discover Magazine the story is from Dec 2002.
Is Radiation Good For You?
http://www.discover.com/issues/dec-02/features/featradiation/
from the article:
Worms exposed to excessive heat, rats given a little dioxin, mice and humans exposed to low-level radiation—all have lived longer, in controlled experiments, than they would have without the toxins. Now Calabrese and a small but growing number of researchers worldwide are zeroing in on the biological basis for this effect. "If you really understood the master switch," he says, "it would become very powerful."
Posted by: Shane Milburn at Jul 30, 2006 2:37:25 PM
I'm 6'2" and it may be like riding the Tokoyo subway.
You look down on a sea of heads topping out at about
shoulder level except every once in a while you see
a couple of Japanese teenagers sticking up like I do.
Posted by: spencer at Jul 30, 2006 2:40:31 PM
Ronald Brak: "I understand dieting is quite popular in North America even amoung children. I wonder if this results in
Americans being shorter than what they would be otherwise? It might also explain why Americans are so fat
if the body reacts to semi-starvation by packing on more pounds."
Best theory here! And it agrees with my anecdotal observations that girls obsessed with their weight in pre-teen years wind up short.
Posted by: Half Sigma at Jul 30, 2006 3:40:29 PM
Americans have barely grown at all in the last 25 years or so, and are now a standard deviation or so behind the Dutch in height. The Dutch, however, are rather anomalous within Europe:
http://www.isteve.com/2003_NBA_Height_Spreading_Globally.htm
Another factoid of interest is that the average NBA player is the same height today as in the mid-1980s.
http://isteve.blogspot.com/2006/04/nba-players-not-getting-taller.html
This is despite a large expansion in the sources of very tall players from around the world.
Posted by: Steve Sailer at Jul 30, 2006 5:45:29 PM
Some what an off-topic remark:
About Dutch unemployment figures: that 4-5% is a statistical trick. Around 5% of the workforce receives what is officially called an unemployment benefit. Three percent of the workforce receives welfare. Furthermore a whopping 8.5% receives some form of disability insurance. This WAO was used during the eighties to get rid of employees in the industrial sectors without angering the unions (the so-called social dumping): a WAO benefit is for a indefinite period, a unemployment benefits becomes the (much lower) welfare benefit after 52 weeks.
The fact of the matter is that the Dutch economy has about one sixth of it's possible workforce on the sidelines. How can we afford this: a very good location between the commercial centers of the UK and Germany and a lack of really poor rural regions.
@Ronald:
Goed om een Nederlander hier te zien! ;-)
@Lars:
Americans eat so much more meat than Europeans, so growth hormones can't explain the difference.
Posted by: JSK at Jul 30, 2006 7:31:27 PM
Perhaps it's related to climate, too. The periods of shortest height in Europe also tend to coincide with the coldest. From an evolutionary standpoint, it makes sense to have tall, thin bodies in warm climates and short, stocky bodies in cold ones. We know that the Industrial Revolution began just as Europe was emerging from a Little Ice Age. The great change in height could be due to a warmer Europe.
- Josh
Posted by: Wild Pegasus at Jul 30, 2006 9:31:51 PM
As nutrition and childhood disease prevention has gotten better, I would say that the genetic component of height is more dispositive...it also raises average height for population as a whole.
My family is pretty short on my Ma's side (most of the women barely make 5 feet, so I'm relatively tall at 5'4") - but we all ate very well growing up and we weren't sickly as kids. I bet in the bad old days, our heights may not have been that much different - we're pretty stocky, so obviously peasantish sorts in our background.
It will be interesting to see how my family turns out, as my husband's people are =huge=. His Ma & sisters are 6 feet tall, and he's the runt of his male cousins, as he's only 6'3" and lightly built. The guys in his family tend to be about 6'7". Our children are all under 4 years, but they're already huge compared to other children here in Queens - and it's not like they've got better nutrition than those around us. They started packing on the pounds and inches from birth. Our newborn boy is only 2 months old and fitting in clothes for 6 month old babies. It always amazes me how fast they bulk up.
Anyway, interesting to see. Nutritional and health habits have an obvious impact, as when I visited Japan 10 years ago, I saw the boomer generation was pretty short, but the teens I saw were really, really tall (tough to get big on fish and rice). The girls looked like wrestlers to me.
Posted by: meep at Jul 31, 2006 10:35:14 AM
When we first went to live in Australia, my wife pointed out that the men weren't taller than we were used to in Britain, but the women were. Her guess was "a country so rich that even the girls have been well-fed for generations".
Posted by: dearieme at Jul 31, 2006 11:59:15 AM
When we first went to live in Australia, my wife pointed out that the men weren't taller than we were used to in Britain, but the women were. Her guess was "a country so rich that even the girls have been well-fed for generations".
Posted by: dearieme at Jul 31, 2006 11:59:55 AM
"hormesis" is the keyword for small amounts of stress being good for health.
As for heights in the middle ages, all I can do is think of the Art Institute's (Chicago) collection of full plate armor in Gunsaulus Hall. They're teeny!
"What about pollution related and lifestyle related diseases? Overall governments are finding out that they have to spend a lot on people who are NOT healthier,"
Fact: we live longer and healthier than ever before. Diseases cropping up in the 70s and 80s beat diseases cropping up in the 50s. Or 20s.
Posted by: Damien at Jul 31, 2006 2:33:45 PM
I remember hearing somewhere a typically Dutch theory as to why they were so tall and healthy: because they go to bed at a sensible hour. Unlike, say, those debauched Spaniards.
Posted by: James W at Aug 1, 2006 1:24:21 AM
I would agree that the Dutch are very tall and rank as the tallest people in Europe. However, they are also regarded as being the tallest people currently in the world. Behind them are the Scandinavians and people from the Dinaric Alps ( i.e, Slovenia, Croatia, Nontenegro in particular and extending up to NE Italy ). I live in the UK and am 5 feet 11 inches. I do not regard the English as tall but on the other hand they are not short. Also, when walking down a street in England I feel that I am of a good stature and above average height. However, when I walk amidst a group of Dutch people I do feel quite short. One must also remember that the English are very mixed racially - certainly more so than the Scandinavians and Dutch - which may explain whey they are not as tall. We now know that height is linked not just to diet, environment and exercise but principally to heredity i.e. genes. The English have coursing through their veins the blood of races who were predominantly short or stocky such as Mediterranean peoples, Celts and indigenous non Indo-Europeans. However, what is surprising is that English men are shorter still than certain populations outside Europe. For example, today the average height of a man in Iran between say 18 and 25 is over 5 feet 10 inches. The community to which I belong - the Sikh community - was also renowned once for the height among its men. When the British arrived in India they commented on how the Sikhs towered over them and certainly a height of 6 feet plus in those days was not at all unusual among Sikh men as indeed it is not today ( my paternal grandfather was 6 feet 4 inches, I have many cousins and uncles who are well over 6 feet too and my sister-in-law's brother is 6 feet 6 inches ).Interestingly, the majority of Sikhs are Jat by ethnicity an ancient Indo-Aryan race regaded as one of the most homogeneous racial groups in the World. I should also dispel some other myths about certain peoples and populations at which the English are accustomed to sneer contemptuously ; the Greeks are regarded as being little runts by many of English people I have spoken to although not in so many words however the young generation of Greek men ( say between 18 and 30 ) living on the Greek mainland tower in terms of average height over the English. In 1993, I stayed with an English friend of mine who was teaching English in Haidari, a suburb of Athens. The family he was lodging with were the Spirous and their son George, 18 at the time, stood 6 feet 4 and his three best friends were taller than him one of them 6 feet 6. This was not unusual and I came across large numbers of young Greek men who were well over 6 feet and extremely well built with that.
Posted by: Nav at Aug 3, 2006 10:25:16 AM
What the does height have to do with health. Japan's avg height is several inches below the Dutch yet its life expectancy is 80.25 the Netherlands is 78.96. Japan's infant mortality is only 3.24 deaths for every 1000 live births while Netherlands is 4.96 deaths. I fail to see the correlation between height and health.
Posted by: Ian at Sep 8, 2006 2:33:47 AM
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Posted by: levan at Sep 11, 2006 4:17:08 AM
why couldnt i be dutch? im 5 foot 3 18 year old male! Sad eh, if i was dutch i would at least be my dream, 5'6 or 5'7 (which is short to you average 5'11" guys out there)
Posted by: Johnathan at Sep 16, 2006 9:52:13 PM
JSK said:
Perhaps it's related to climate, too. The periods of shortest height in Europe also tend to coincide with the coldest. From an evolutionary standpoint, it makes sense to have tall, thin bodies in warm climates and short, stocky bodies in cold ones. We know that the Industrial Revolution began just as Europe was emerging from a Little Ice Age. The great change in height could be due to a warmer Europe
Then how do you explain that the Scandinavians and people of nordic ancestry (where the climate is cold) are taller compared to people that live in the mediterranean/middle east/latin America where the weather is much warmer?
Posted by: Marios at Sep 18, 2006 9:10:47 PM
who said people of warm countries are not tall,come to india cometo punjab and we will check out ur dutch giants,they may have the same height as ours but girth wise they will be baby dolls come an check us..
Posted by: kulvinder at May 18, 2007 7:57:57 AM
In Europe, at least, people during the Middle Ages were close in height to people today
Posted by: ManBearPig at Nov 24, 2007 12:00:59 PM
Yeah, Greece has become a nation of giants apparently.
Posted by: Dickens at Jul 28, 2008 12:46:10 PM
