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Immigration See other Immigration Articles Title: Economist traces height trend as indicator of nation's success Economist traces height trend as indicator of nation's success CHICAGO --When John Komlos wants to take the measure of a nation's economic well-being, he doesn't check its gross domestic product or consumer price index. He ignores its average household income and unemployment figures. Instead, Komlos takes a look at how tall its people have grown. "Height is a very good overall indicator of how well the human organism thrives in its socioeconomic environment," he explained. Komlos, a professor in the economics department at the University of Munich, Germany, has dedicated his professional life to the study of anthropometric history - his own coinage for the academic field that studies the links between a population's height and general well-being. What Komlos has learned is that Americans, despite their nation's prosperity, abundance of food and cutting-edge medical technology, stopped getting taller in the 1950s and have now been passed by their European cousins. "Americans were head and shoulders above Europeans in the 18th century, and it stayed that way for two centuries," he said. "Now it's the other way around." This, according to Komlos, suggests that Europeans eat better, have better access to health care and enjoy a more equitable distribution of national wealth. They will almost certainly live longer than their American counterparts. "You can learn a lot by looking at people's height," said Komlos, who stands 5 feet 7 inches tall. He attributes his modest stature to a hungry early childhood. Komlos was born in Budapest in the closing months of World War II. He and his family survived Nazi occupation only to be persecuted by Hungarian communists. After the failed revolt of 1956, the family fled to America and settled in Chicago. Komlos' family lived in Chicago's Logan Square, where his father ran a small shop selling leather watchbands. The family also took in boarders, so they had enough to eat, but not much else. Komlos graduated from Lane Technical High School and went on to earn doctorates in history and economics at the University of Chicago. When he was a graduate student, his eureka moment came in 1982 during a lecture by Robert Fogel, the University of Chicago economist who had published a controversial study on the slave economy of the American South and later won a Nobel prize. Fogel's work led to further research by another Chicago doctoral student, Richard Steckel (now at Ohio State University), who established that black slaves stood significantly taller than their African ancestors and most Europeans but were still shorter than their North American owners. "The idea of measuring the living standard of a population using height as a proxy variable attracted me," Komlos recalled. For the next quarter of a century, Komlos scoured obscure archives and public records for data about the height of soldiers in the Austro-Hungarian army, the dietary habits of the working-class poor in 19th century London, and the comparative growth rates of children in East and West Germany. Fascinating history One of Komlos' first revelations was that soldiers in George Washington's Continental Army were, on average, a full 2 inches taller than the British soldiers they defeated. But it was not until 2004, when he and colleague Marieluise Baur published a paper documenting America's relative decline in stature, that his anthropometric research grabbed widespread notice. "From the Tallest to (One of) the Fattest: The Enigmatic Fate of the American Population in the 20th Century," was the title of their paper, and in it they showed that American men and women simply stopped growing in the 1950s, while the developed nations of Europe went on a spectacular growth spurt. The Dutch led the way. At the end of World War II, the average Dutch male stood no taller than 5 foot 7, about 3 inches shorter than the average American male. Today, the average height for Dutch males is a shade less than 6 foot 1, making them the tallest people in the world. Scandinavian males run a close second. Medical experts have established that our adult height is largely determined by three growth spurts. The first occurs in infancy, the second between age 6 and the onset of puberty, and the third during adolescence. Genetics determines an individual's height - whether a person is shorter or taller than the national norm - but external factors determine a population's height. External factors While the media quickly latched onto the height rankings, Komlos and other economists were more interested in the external factors that were causing the startling disparity between American and European growth rates. In the 2004 paper, Komlos fingered two likely suspects: the growing gap between rich and poor in the United States, and its lack of universal health care. Although the United States has been the dominant economic power since the end of World War II, its wealth has not been very evenly distributed. According to standard measures, countries such as the Netherlands and the Scandinavian nations are at the top of the list; the United States ranks near the bottom, tied with Ghana and Turkmenistan, according to United Nations figures. When income is distributed more evenly, it follows that access to health care also is evenly and equitably distributed, Komlos said. He noted that a high number of Americans are without health insurance (a U.S. Census Bureau report put the figure at 47 million for 2006), meaning that millions of American children do not get top-notch medical care during the critical growth years. Meanwhile, the "tall" countries of the world have been providing their citizens with cradle-to-grave health care for generations. Komlos does not claim that his research has established a causal link between a nation's height and its health care delivery system, only that "height is a pretty good indicator of how well a society treats its children and young people." Komlos is struck by two things when he visits the U.S.: the alarming proportion of the population that is overweight, and the shortfall in height - especially among females. Could America's diminished stature have something to do with its expanding girth? Very likely, Komlos said. "The tremendous amount of fast food consumed by Americans ... has to have an impact," he said. Studying the U.S. military In new research that will be published next month, Komlos looks at the height of American military personnel. His interest in the military has less to do with the potential fighting capacity of tall soldiers versus short ones, but rather the fact that militaries tend to gather and keep extensive data on their personnel. The U.S. Army collects data on the birthplace not only of its soldiers but also of their parents, enabling Komlos to control for those who are children of immigrants. Some critics of Komlos' previous work suggested that U.S. heights may have skewed downward because the national statistics he used included significant numbers of immigrants and their children, who tend to be shorter. The new findings corroborate his previous work. Heights of male and female military personnel track closely with those of the civilian population - soldiers and civilians both stopped growing in the mid-1950s. The latest national height data contains some good news and some bad, Komlos said. The good news is that there are indications that Americans may have started to grow again. The bad news is that this growth trend appears to be bypassing black females. "This is an uncomfortable finding, especially at a time when Europeans and other developed countries are not only catching up but exceeding us," Komlos said.
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