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?
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.
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
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.
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.
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.”
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.
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.
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.
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”.
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.
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.
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?
In Europe, at least, people during the Middle Ages were close in height to people today
One thing that you must keep in mind is that eating does not make fat but it increases the height. Like, I am a Persian and I was 5’10″ when I was 17: all of my friends were taller than me and I used to feel so bad of it. And mom told me to eat more – eating many times a day in normal level rather than eating like an animal once a day. I did and I kept doing until the time I’ve completed my height growth the age 21. Now I am 22 and I heigh 6’3″ and two inches higher than my friends. You see that with eating I grew 5″! Try it out!
By the way, the Duthces are the tallest people in the World because they eat so much red meat. A Dutch male in average heigh 6’1″.
Regarding the Netherlands, has anyone mentioned the fact that the country has an excellent system of universal healthcare (unlike some countries I could name)? People in countries with such a system live longer, too.
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