Showing papers by "Jane Humphries published in 1998"

Stature and relative deprivation: fatherless children in early industrial Britain

Abstract: iEconomic historians and development economists have exploited links between nutrition, health status and physical stature to argue that evidence about height can be used to supplement conventional economic indices of well-being. Evidence on stature may be available for time periods when conventional economic indices are not. It may also exist for sections of populations for which only aggregate income data is available, and so expose variations in living standards within populations: indeed this may be its most important contribution. Moreover height is an aggregate function of many aspects of well-being, including real income, work intensity and the disease environment. Unlike real income data it can reflect net environmental factors such as arduous employment at an early age that is not fully oset by inputs of food and health care. This article exploits these potentially useful attributes of the anthropometric approach to explore a neglected aspect of inequality in early industrial Britain and to try to capture evidence of the net eect of relative deprivation through cross-sectional analyses of heights. Children in families headed by women comprise the subsample on which we focus. Considerable qualitative and some quantitative evidence exists to suggest that children in such families were relatively deprived. Female-headed

Death and Gender in Victorian England and Wales: Comparisons with Contemporary Developing Countries

Abstract: Age-specific death rates for males and females are compared for a sample of mid- Victorian registration districts. Excess female mortality is defined relative to the normal relationship between male and female mortality observed in the data, and then modelled as the outcome of economic, demographic, social and environmental factors. The relationships are investigated statistically using cross-section ecological regression analysis. Excess female mortality in Victorian Britain is found in different age groups compared with its counterpart in contemporary poor countries and appears to be related to a different nexus of economic valuation, social standing and bargaining power. We see less pressure to discriminate against female children but a cultural and familial context which identified motherhood with sacrifice.