Standards of the Present for People of the Past: Height, Weight, and Mortality among Men of Amherst College, 1834–1949
1997 ◽
Vol 57
(3)
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pp. 585-606
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Keyword(s):
The Past
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Whether anthropometric-mortality risk relationships as found in present day populations also characterized past populations is disputed. This article finds U-shaped body mass index (BMI)-mortality risk relationships among nineteenth-century men that were similar to such relationships as found in twentieth-century men. No relationship between height and mortality could be detected. This article infers from the socioeconomic homogeneity of the sample that the BMI-mortality risk relationship, although apparently invariant with respect to time, is driven by noneconomic factors.