Knowledge Bank

Height has been used in a growing literature as a measure of net nutrition throughout the first 20 years of life. This paper builds on that literature by considering the influence that net nutrition has on a population’s labor productivity. Using data from Danish and Italian conscription programs, we are able to create a more rigorous estimate of changes in final adult height over a period of 150 years by distributing the measured adult height over the age distribution of the male population. This calculation creates a measure of the age-distributed height of the labor force, which then permits an analysis over a longer period of time than other contemporary essays on height and labor productivity. My findings suggest that net nutrition in people’s first 20 years has had a significant and positive effect on labor productivity over the twentieth century. Additionally, I explore and hypothesize on the causal relationship between nutrition and educational achievement.