John E. Murray

Marital protection and marital selection: evidence from a historical-prospective sample of American men

Whether marriage causes people to live longer or whether healthier people select into marriage is an open question. In this study I followed a sample of men from age 18 to first marriage and ultimately to death. Health in early adulthood was represented by height and weight around age 20. The probability of ever marrying and the conditional probability of marriage in a given time period were lower for smaller men and greater for larger men. Marriage significantly lowered mortality risk even after controlling for health in early adulthood. Thus I found support both for selection into marriage and for protective effects of marriage.

Standards of the Present for People of the Past: Height, Weight, and Mortality among Men of Amherst College, 1834–1949

Whether anthropometric-mortality risk relationships as found in present day populations also characterized past populations is disputed. This article finds U-shaped body mass index (BMI)-mortality risk relationships among nineteenth-century men that were similar to such relationships as found in twentieth-century men. No relationship between height and mortality could be detected. This article infers from the socioeconomic homogeneity of the sample that the BMI-mortality risk relationship, although apparently invariant with respect to time, is driven by noneconomic factors.

Women's Stature and Marriage Markets in Preindustrial Bavaria

The authors investigate marital patterns among Bavarian women born 1819 to 1886. In particular, Beckers hypothesis concerning heights and probability of marriage, namely, that likes tend to marry likes, is considered. The authors find to the contrary that the shortest women were at a distinct disadvantage in the marriage market. Other characteristics that lowered the probability of ever marrying included birth in northern Bavaria, lower class status, and illegitimate birth. It is concluded that the height-marital status relationship sheds light on the wage premium paid to married workers: The premium probably reflects greater productivity that (1) existed prior to marriage and (2) increased the likelihood of marriage.

Markets For Children In Early America: A Political Economy Of Pauper Apprenticeship

After beginning as a kind of outdoor poor relief, long-term indenture of poor children evolved into a specialized form of craft apprenticeship. Analysis of indenture terms indicates that relationships between end payments (“freedom dues†) and education and training clauses varied by region. In Boston, education and training clauses were associated negatively with freedom-dues clauses, but in Rhode Island and Charleston the relationship was positive. Variation in freedom dues to suit the needs of the master or overseer of the poor, without reference to the worker-childs own interests, resulted from the childs lack of advocacy during contract formation.

Generation(s) of Human Capital: Literacy in American Families, 1830-1875

Generation(s) of Human Capital: Literacy in American Families, I830-I875 That human capital has played a critical role in the development of the American economy is generally accepted. Investments in people paid a handsome return through a productive and mobile work force. One indication of these investments in human capital was a growing proportion of both men and women who showed the most rudimentary skill-the ability to sign their name, rather than marking with an X. Signature literacy is recognized as a useful, if crude, measure of human capital. Although some of those who signed their names may not have been able to read (or write anything other than their name), some who marked may have been able to read. Hence, signature rates are considered to demonstrate a middle level of literacy skill, and a substantial literature has grown up around their study. Initially high relative to European levels, signature literacy in America grew steadily throughout the nineteenth century. Ultimately, such human-capital accumulation accounted for as much as one-eighth of output growth early in this century.1

Bastardy in South Germany Revisited: An Anthropometric Synthesis

Bastardy in South Germany Revisited: An Anthropometric Synthesis Twenty years ago, in these pages, a debate proceeded concerning the status of children who were born to unmarried parents in nineteenth-century Bavaria. The disputants associated the causes and effects of the well-established increase in bastardy with differences in well-being between the illegitimately and the legitimately born. Lee approached the problem by proposing several possible explanations and striking each as insufficient, until only economic factors remained. Industrialization, he noted, did not occur in Bavaria to any significant degree until later in the century, after the wave of illegitimacy had begun to swell. Similarly, the increased legal age and property requirements for marriage that were designed to discourage the poor from starting families also postdated what they were supposed to have caused. The secularization of the Catholic Church in 1803 might have weakened the influence of its moral teachings, but Lee denied that the Church had enjoyed much control over sexual behavior even before secularization. He also maintained that legal changes had diminished the stigma previously associated with bastardy, and that better real wages enabled families to support children born out of wedlock reasonably well. The sheer number

Family, Literacy, and Skill Training in the Antebellum South: Historical-Longitudinal Evidence from Charleston

Using individual measures of adult and child literacy, this article examines human capital acquisition in one Southern city, Charleston, 1790–1840. White adult literacy rates differed greatly by sex and class and rose gradually over time. Mothers played a critical role in human capital transmission in early childhood and long after children had left their care. Both relatively recent literacy acquisition and early childhood family structure influenced the occupation to which children were apprenticed. These results are consistent with present-day studies that trace sources of adult well-being back into childhood.

Stature and body-mass index among mid-nineteenth century South Chinese immigrants

Mean values of anthropometric measurements of 150 Chinese men, taken in 1864 or 1865, were recovered. The subjects had emigrated to California and were returning to China when they were measured. Comparisons were made to measurements of other Chinese men of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The men of this sample were much taller than those in other South Chinese samples, and about as tall as those in North Chinese samples.

Fates of Orphans: Poor Children in Antebellum Charleston

The circumstances of children upon leaving the Charleston Orphan House were strongly influenced by their circumstances upon arriving. Most of these children were bound out as apprentices after a few years; a large, and growing, minority of them returned to their families; and others died or ran away from the institution. Those with widowed mothers who maintained close ties with themas evidenced by the childrens literacywere most likely to resume family life after their mothers remarried. Those who had been delivered to the orphanage by other family members or by public officials tended not to be so fortunate.

Productivity of a Commune: The Shakers, 1850-80

How does the productivity of a commune compare with that of a conventional firm? This paper addresses this question quantitatively by focusing on the history of a religious commune called the United Society of Believers, better known as the Shakers. We utilize the information recorded in the enumeration schedules of the US Manufacturing and Agriculture Censuses, available for the period between 1850 to 1880, to estimate the productivities of Shaker shops and farms. From the same data source, we also construct random samples of other shops and farms and estimate their productivities for comparison with the Shakers. Our results provide support to the contention that communes need not always suffer from reduced productivity. Shaker farms and shops generally performed just as productively as their neighbors; when differences did exist between their productivities, there are good reasons to attribute them to factors other than organizational form.