Francesco Cinnirella

Size Matters! Body Height and Labor Market Discrimination: A Cross-European Analysis

Taller workers earn on average higher salaries. Recent research has proposed cognitive abilities and social skills as explanations for the height-wage premium. Another possible mechanism, employer discrimination, has found little support. In this paper, we provide some evidence in favor of the discrimination hypothesis. Using a cross section of 13 countries, we show that there is a consistent height-wage premium across Europe and that it is largely due to occupational sorting. We show that height has a significant effect for the occupational sorting of employed workers but not for the self-employed. We interpret this result as evidence of employer discrimination in favor of taller workers. Our results are consistent with the theoretical predictions of recent models on statistical discrimination and employer learning.

Optimists or pessimists? A reconsideration of nutritional status in Britain, 1740-1865

We revise previous estimates on average nutritional status in Britain during the industrial revolution. We find that average nutritional status declined substantially throughout the period 1740–1865, with a partial recovery only for the cohorts born in 1805–9 and 1810–14. The decline in nutritional status estimated for the second half of the eighteenth century is consistent with recent estimates of food prices and farm labour wages. We suggest that parliamentary enclosures and the decline of cottage industry could partially explain the fall in nutritional status. In addition, comparing the age at final attainment of height of a group of rural residents with a group of urban migrants we provide further evidence about the negative impact of urbanization during the early industrial revolution.

iPEHD - The Ifo Prussian Economic History Database

Abstract This article describes the ifo Prussian Economic History Database (iPEHD), a public use county-level database covering a rich collection of variables for nineteenth-century Prussia. The Royal Prussian Statistical Office collected these data in several censuses over the years 1816–1901. These data provide a unique source for micro-regional empirical research in economic history, enabling analyses of education, religion, fertility, industrialization, and many others. The service of iPEHD is to provide the data in a digitized and structured way.

Malthus in the Bedroom: Birth Spacing as Birth Control in Pre-Transition England

We use duration models on a well-known historical data set of more than 15,000 families and 60,000 births in England for the period 1540–1850 to show that the sampled families adjusted the timing of their births in accordance with the economic conditions as well as their stock of dependent children. The effects were larger among the lower socioeconomic ranks. Our findings on the existence of parity-dependent as well as parity-independent birth spacing in England are consistent with the growing evidence that marital birth control was present in pre-transitional populations.

WITHDRAWN: European heights in the early 18th century

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