TY - JOUR
T1 - Bones of contention
T2 - The political economy of height inequality
AU - Boix, Carles
AU - Rosenbluth, Frances
N1 - Funding Information:
Carles Boix thanks the Barcelona Institute for Political Economy and Governance for its financial support. In addition, we have incurred many debts of gratitude in undertaking this project. Gary Aronson and Rose Drew provided hands-on instruction on skeletal identification and measurement, and Rose Drew made trips to the Duckworth Collection at Cambridge and the Tirup Collection in Denmark to measure countless bones. For access to their data, we thank Joerg Baten, Jesper Boldsen, Chryssa Bourbou, Richard L. Jantz, Spencer Clark Larsen, Jurek Kozak, Takahiro Nakahashi, Donald Ortner, Richard Steckel, and Yasuhiro Yamada. For advice on measurement and interpretation and for suggestions on where to find more data, we are grateful to Melvin Ember, Sherry Fox, Trenton Holliday, Iain McLean, Mary Miller, John Murray, Anastasia Papathanasiou, Aleks Pluskowski, Charlotte Roberts, Laura Sinfield, Malcolm Smith, Jay Stockton, Judith Sture, Gen Suwa, Thomas Tartaron, Anastasia Tsaliki, and John Verano. For able research assistance, including tracking down data sources and in some cases measuring bones, we thank Sheena Arackwal, Sajid Ghani, Tess McCann, Lin Nie, Meghan Palmer, Nathaniel Smith, Teruo Utsumi, Shiru Wang, and Maxim Wilson. Previous versions of this article were presented at the 2004 American Political Science Association meeting and in Princeton University's Political Institutions and Economic Policy Workshop, May 2005. We would like thank the participants, especially Jeffrey Frieden, David Laitin, and Ron Rogowski, for their comments.
PY - 2014/2
Y1 - 2014/2
N2 - Human osteological data provide a rich, still-to-be-mined source of information about the distribution of nutrition and, by extension, the distribution of political power and economic wealth in societies of long ago. On the basis of data we have collected and analyzed on societies ranging from foraging communities to the ancient Egyptian and modern European monarchies, we find that the shift from hunting and gathering to complex fishing techniques and to labor-intensive agriculture opened up inequalities that had discernible effects on human health and stature. But we also find that political institutions intervened decisively in the distribution of resources within societies. Political institutions appear to be shaped not only by economic factors but also by military technology and vulnerability to invasion.
AB - Human osteological data provide a rich, still-to-be-mined source of information about the distribution of nutrition and, by extension, the distribution of political power and economic wealth in societies of long ago. On the basis of data we have collected and analyzed on societies ranging from foraging communities to the ancient Egyptian and modern European monarchies, we find that the shift from hunting and gathering to complex fishing techniques and to labor-intensive agriculture opened up inequalities that had discernible effects on human health and stature. But we also find that political institutions intervened decisively in the distribution of resources within societies. Political institutions appear to be shaped not only by economic factors but also by military technology and vulnerability to invasion.
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U2 - 10.1017/S0003055413000555
DO - 10.1017/S0003055413000555
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84894489081
SN - 0003-0554
VL - 108
SP - 1
EP - 22
JO - American Political Science Review
JF - American Political Science Review
IS - 1
ER -