Template-type: ReDIF-Paper 1.0
Author-Name: Eric B. Schneider
Author-Workplace-Name: University of Sussex
Author-Email: e.b.schneider@sussex.ac.uk
Title: Children's Growth in an Adaptive Framework: Explaining the Growth Patterns of American Slaves and other Historial Populations
Abstract: This paper presents a new adaptive framework for understanding children’s
growth in the past. Drawing upon the recent work of Gluckman and Hanson (2006)
and their co-authors on adaptive responses in relation to growth, I present three
prenatal and three postnatal adaptive mechanisms that affect the growth patterns of
children. The most novel adaptive response to the historical literature is the prenatal
predictive adaptive response where the foetus develops assuming that the postnatal
environment will closely match prenatal conditions. Thus, the metabolism and growth
trajectory of a child is programmed during the prenatal period: children experiencing
good conditions in utero would have a higher metabolism and growth trajectory than
their counterparts facing poor conditions. Having discussed the framework and other
responses in detail, I then use it to reinterpret the growth pattern of American slaves
(Steckel, 1979, 1986). I argue that the mismatch between relatively good conditions
in utero and absolutely appalling conditions in infancy and early childhood led slave
children to become incredibly stunted by age three or four. However, after this age,
slave children experienced rapid catch-up growth, first because their immune systems
had become more developed and had adapted to the poor disease environment and
later because their diet improved tremendously and hookworm exposure was reduced
when they entered the labour force around age ten. Thus, American slave children
were able to experience rapid catch-up growth because they were prenatally
programmed for a higher metabolism and growth trajectory. The paper concludes by
setting out some stylized facts about children’s growth in the past and pointing toward
areas of future research.
X-Classification-JEL: 
X-Keywords: 
Length: 32 pages
Creation-Date: 2014-05-11
Number: _130
File-URL: http://www.economics.ox.ac.uk/materials/papers/13356/schneider-growth-in-an-adaptive-framework.pdf
File-Format: application/pdf
Handle: RePEc:nuf:esohwp:_130