TY  - JOUR
AU  - Floud,Roderick
AU  - Wachter,Kenneth W.
AU  - Gregory,Annabel
TI  - The Physical State of the British Working Class, 1870-1914:  Evidence from Army Recruits
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 1661
PY  - 1985
Y2  - July 1985
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w1661
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w1661.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Roderick Floud
Gresham College
Barnard's Inn Hall
Holborn
London EC1N 2HH
UNITED KINGDOM
Tel: 44 (0)7711 495 890
Fax: 44-207-8628657
E-Mail: Provost@gresham.ac.uk
AB  - It is easier to discover why people died in the past than how healthy they were during their lives. However, in both Europe and North America, much evidence survives about the health of young males from the medical examination of recruits to the armed forces. The paper discusses the possibility of generalizing from one such source, that of British volunteer recruits, to the health of the male working class. It concludes that the source is not seriously biassed and that, after some statistical correction, the data suggest a gradual improvement in the nutritional status, measured by average height, of the British working class.This finding contradicts much contemporary opinion that the British were physically deteriorating in the late nineteenth century.
ER  -