New Sources and New Techniques for the Study of Secular Trends in Nutritional Status, Health, Mortality, and the Process of Aging / Robert William Fogel.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Fogel, Robert William.

Contributor:

National Bureau of Economic Research.

Series:

Historical Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) no. h0026.

NBER historical working paper series no. h0026

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Aging--Nutritional aspects.

Aging.

Physical Description:

1 online resource: illustrations (black and white);

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 1993.

Cambridge, Massachusetts : National Bureau of Economic Research, 1993.

Summary:

The aim of this paper is to describe the full dimensions of a new and rapidly growing research program that uses new data sources on food consumption, anthropometric measures, genealogies, and life-cycle histories to shed light on secular trends in nutritional status, health, mortality, and the process of aging. The exploitation of these types of data involves integration of analytical procedures in medicine and economics with those of demography. The discussion is divided into four parts. Part one deals with sources on food consumption and with methods of exploiting these sources that involve the integration of energy cost accounting with techniques for the analysis of income distributions. The second part is concerned with sources of anthropometric information and with techniques that may be utilized to relate such information to the assessment of health and mortality. Part three involves the more complex problem of relating socioeconomic and biomedical stress suffered by individuals early in life to their work levels, health and mortality rates at middle and late ages. The final section discusses the uses of genealogies by themselves and in combination with the preceding data sources.

Notes:

Print version record

December 1993.