New Findings On Secular Trends In Nutrition And Mortality: Some

Implications For Population Theory

Presented by Hui Huang

Robert William Fogel

IntroductionIntegration of

Biomedical techniques

with Economic techniques

Four parts of discussion

1. s2: the evolution of thought on the secular decline in mortality

2. s3: from famines to chronic malnutrition

3. s4: new theory about food supply and population equilibrium

4. s5: implication of the theory for current population issues

The evolution of thought on, and knowledge of, the secular decline in

mortality

Section 2

Malthusian Theory of Population

1798 Periodical mortality crises were created by

the pressure of population on food supplies Mortality rate declines when the pressure

was relieved Mortality decline were temporary

Initial efforts to explain the secular decline in mortality

Relationship between food supply and mortality rates

Focused on abstracts of parish records collected by government

Explanations: public health reforms

advances in medical knowledge

…etc

McKeown’s challenge to consensus view

Consensus explanation: changes in technology and public health reforms

McKeown: improved nutrition

Set off an extensive controversy

Crisis mortality and famines

Mid-1980s: debate over mortality crises Crisis mortality was the main source of

the high mortality rate?

the famines were the source of the crises?

Measuring the extent and significance of chronic malnutrition

Section 3

Energy cost accounting

Basal metabolic rate (BMR) Energy requirement beyond maintenance Sources of estimates of mean caloric

consumptions

national food balance sheets

household survey

food allotments in various institutions...

Estimating the levels and distributions of caloric consumption in Britain and France near the end of the Ancien R

egime

The implication of stature and body mass indexes for the

explanation of secular trends in morbidity and mortality

Implications for population theory

Section 4

How variations in body size brought the population and the food supply into balance and determined the level of mortality

The nature of European famines

Man-made rather than natural disaster.

Contribution of improved nutrition and health to the growth of labor productivity

Conclusions and implications

Section 5

The principal findings

Crisis mortality accounted for a small share The famines were man-made Proper government policy could not have

eliminated the chronic malnutrition. Improvements in nutritional status explains

much of the decline in mortality rates. Stunting increases mortality rates

Implication for current policy

Third World Highly developed countries Food supply