Australian Economic History Reviewan Asia-Pacific Journal of Economic, Business & Social History
PHYSICAL STATURE IN NINETEENTH-CENTURYNEW ZEALAND: A PRELIMINARY INTERPRETATION
By Kris Inwood, Les Oxley and Evan RobertsUniversity of Guelph, University of Canterbury, and Victoria University of Wellington
During the late nineteenth century, the physical stature of NewZealand-born men stagnated, despite an apparently beneficialpublic health environment and growth in per-capita incomes. Weexamine trends and differentials in male stature through World WarI enlistment and casualty records. Stature varied by social class,with professionals and men in rural occupations substantially tallerthan their peers. There is not enough evidence to show that theindigenous Maori population differed in height from men of Euro-pean descent. Stagnation in stature in late nineteenth-century NewZealand is consistent with patterns observed in Australia, NorthAmerica, and Western Europe.aehr_305 262..283
JEL codes: O56, I10, N37
Keywords: anthropometric history, biological standard of living, height, Maori,New Zealand, physical stature, well-being
INTRODUCTION
Long-term change in the health of a population is a key indicator of changingliving standards. Yet there are few measures of health and living standards that areconsistent over several decades. A large literature has established that the bestmeasure of changing health and living standards over several centuries is averagestature.1 Although modern health surveys have documented recent changes andvariation in adult stature in New Zealand, there is little historical evidence. Thispaper begins to fill that gap, by identifying and interpreting the evidence ofphysical stature among male New Zealanders born between 1868 and 1900.Consistent with the pattern observed in other countries, we find that averagestature declined in New Zealand in the 1890s.
1 Steckel, Biological measures; Steckel, Heights and human welfare.
Australian Economic History Review, Vol. 50, No. 3 November 2010ISSN 0004-8992 doi: 10.1111/j.1467-8446.2010.00305.x
Research on comparable countries such as the United States, Canada, andGreat Britain finds mean stature declined at various points during the late eigh-teenth and nineteenth centuries in circumstances that point to the deleteriouseffects of industrialisation, urbanisation, and contemporary economic growth.2
Admittedly evidence is more limited for cohorts born in the closing decades ofthe nineteenth century. The effect of economic growth on height and physicalwell-being is particularly complex for Australia.3 European-descended NewZealanders, like many Australians, shared a common genetic background withEuropeans and European migrants to other ‘New World’ countries. New Zealandevidence on changes in height thus contributes to the broader question of howEuropeans and their descendents responded to changes in the nutritionalenvironment.
At first glance, late nineteenth-century New Zealand was a healthy countrywith a beneficial nutritional environment. The New Zealand Official Yearbookfor 1912, for example, claims the lowest infant mortality rates anywhere in theworld, detailing how infant mortality started declining in the 1890s.4 Populationdensity in New Zealand cities was low compared with population density else-where. Most dwellings in New Zealand, even in cities, were designed for a singlehousehold. Multi-story tenements were uncommon.5 Other non-monetary mea-sures suggest New Zealand had high living standards.
Income per-capita compared favourably with other developed countries. By1938, New Zealand’s GDP per capita, adjusted for purchasing power parity(PPP), was the highest in the world, but New Zealand’s development was accom-panied by long swings in economic growth.6 Average incomes per capita in NewZealand around 1870 were high compared with the rest of the world, but growthrates were falling, and the prospects for economic development appeared uncer-tain.7 At the end of the 1880s, New Zealand experienced net emigration, urbanunemployment, discontent surrounding sweated conditions in the clothing trades,and an unrequited hunger for land among the settlers. Real GDP per capita fellin the years to 1890, when wool dominated staple exports. Thereafter, in the48 years, 1890–1938, New Zealand’s real GDP per capita growth averaged about1.26 per cent a year, but there were marked swings.8 New Zealand experienced a30-year boom from around 1890, a long depression centred on the 1920s, anda remarkably fast recovery during the 1930s. Accordingly, GDP per capita
2 Haines, Growing incomes, shrinking people; Komlos, Stature, Living Standards; Steckel, Heightsand human welfare.
3 Shlomowitz, Did the mean height; Whitwell et al., Height, health and economic growth; Whitwelland Nicholas, Weight and welfare.
4 Dominion of New Zealand, New Zealand Official Yearbook.5 Ferguson, Building, pp. 35–54.6 Greasley and Oxley, Growing apart.7 Greasley and Oxley, Outside the club.8 Greasley and Oxley, The pastoral boom.
(corrected for PPP differences), was 97.2 per cent of the U.S. level in 1913, fell to76.3 per cent in 1929, and rose to 105.5 per cent in 1938.9
The relationship in other countries between income growth, industrial devel-opment, disease, and height suggests that if any developed country in the worldmight have been exempt from the late-nineteenth century trend towards dimin-ishing stature before 1900, it would be New Zealand. To understand colonialeconomic development, we must make two comparisons. First, how did livingstandards of the European-descended population compare with those in Europe,North America, and Australia? Second, within New Zealand, we can compare theliving standards of indigenous Maori and more recently arrived Pakeha (non-indigenous New Zealanders). We provide new evidence on these issues through aconsideration of the following four questions: Was there in New Zealand, aselsewhere, some tendency for height to diminish for those born before 1900? Ifthere was a transition from stagnant or declining stature to rising heights, did itoccur at roughly the same time in New Zealand as elsewhere? Are there socio-economic correlates that hint at the underlying causation for inequality andchange over time? Were there significant differences between New Zealand-borndescendents of European immigrants and the indigenous Maori population?
Our principal evidence for assessing well-being is stature. Stature is comple-mentary to income as a measure of well-being, particularly for the past and indeveloping economies today. It is especially valuable when individual level dataon incomes are unavailable, as is the case for nineteenth-century New Zealand.Adult stature is a proxy measure of health that reflects net nutrition during thegrowth period. If infectious disease loads are high, growth will suffer, and averageheights will tend to decline. Other influences on net nutrition, including avail-ability of food and workload, can change population stature while health remainsunchanged. Although changes in stature do not directly indicate changes in healthand must be correlated with other measures of population well-being, it is a usefulmeasure of health.10 The international literature on changes in stature drawsextensively on military records, making the New Zealand samples broadly similar.
New Zealand men enlisted in large numbers in World War I. In the two yearsbetween the outbreak of war in August 1914 and the introduction of conscriptionin June 1916, 90,324 men volunteered, from a population of approximately200,000 men aged between 20 and 45.11 Enthusiasm waned somewhat in mid-1915, when news of the debacle at the Gallipoli (Turkey) landings showed thatenlistment brought not just the opportunity for overseas travel, but a high risk ofbeing wounded or dying.12 Conscription with few exemptions was introduced forthe European-descended population in 1916, and the indigenous Maori in June1917. Subsequently, 134,460 men were examined for their suitability for service.
9 Maddison, World Economy.10 Steckel, Heights and human welfare, p. 12.11 Volunteer figures from Callon, Fighting fit, p. 26. Population figures calculated from 1911 Census
of New Zealand.12 Crawford and McGibbon, New Zealand’s Great War.
In total, 225,000 men were examined or about 90 per cent of the population in theeligible age range.13 This suggests most men of eligible service age were examined,supplemented by some eager men from outside the eligible range.
The health of volunteers and conscripts differed mainly in the extremes of theeligible age range. Overall, just 29.8 per cent of the volunteers were rejected formedical reasons.14 Men who were conscripted had higher rejection rates. Of the134,460 men examined between November 1916 and November 1918, 57.6 percent were rejected, double the rate of rejection among volunteers. The increase inthe rejection rate is partly an artefact of the different age composition betweenvolunteers and conscripts. Among a comparable group of 20–24-year-old men,40.8 per cent were rejected, a one-third increase on the rejection rate amongvolunteers. Rejection rates in the 25–29 and 30–34 age groups rose less than onepercentage point with the introduction of conscription. Rejection rates rosesharply for men over 35 when conscription replaced volunteering.15 This suggeststhat our estimates of stature for men born before 1883 are likely to be moreaffected by changing recruitment than estimates for men born after 1883. Ourdiscussion of results focuses largely on differences between men born in the 1880sand 1890s – a comparison that will be mostly unaffected by the mix of volunteerand conscripted men.
STATURE AS A MEASURE OF HEALTH
Stature is a summary measure of the cumulative effect of nutrition during child-hood through early adulthood and the effects of environmental conditions, theimpact of disease, and workload on the body.16 Sustained nutritional deficitsduring this formative period of growth will result in individual stature falling shortof maximum potential height. The human body puts calories to the immediatetask of replenishing energy and fighting disease before physical growth. If a youthis persistently sick or expends more calories than s/he takes in, growth will slow.When these nutritional deficits are widespread across the population, averagestature will fall.17 There are three main causes of nutritional deficits, which whileanalytically separate are not mutually exclusive: (i) limitation in the availability ofcalories; (ii) persistent bouts of infectious disease while energy intake is constant;and (iii) elevated energy expenditure while energy intake and disease exposure areconstant. Since the 1970s, stature has been widely and increasingly used tomeasure the biological standard of living in an historical and long-term context.18
13 Government Statistician, 1911 Census, p. xii.14 Callon, Fighting fit, p. 26.15 Callon, Fighting fit, pp. 27–30.16 Bogin, Patterns of Human Growth; Eveleth and Tanner, Worldwide Variation.17 Silventoinen, Determinants of variation.18 Floud et al., Height, Health and History; Komlos, Shrinking in a growing economy.
The stature of men in North America and most of Western Europe fell in the latenineteenth century and only recovered in the twentieth century.19 Industrial andurban growth meant that despite rising incomes, health-related infrastructureoften could not keep pace with population growth. Nutrient-dense food oftenbecame less affordable; protein-deficient diets may have contributed to declines instature.20 A relevant comparison is Australia, where men were taller than whitemen in North America and Europe. Australian men born in the long economicdepression of the 1880s and 1890s, however, may have been shorter than theirAustralian peers born in the 1870s or early twentieth century.21
We are also particularly interested in the health and physique of the indigenousMaori population. Health disparities between Maori and the European-descended Pakeha population have been a persistent concern in New Zealandsince the 1960s.22 International comparisons of indigenous and European statureare limited. North American evidence suggests indigenous populations continuedto have adequate protein in their diets because they were more rural.23 Stature forAustralian indigenous men between the 1890s and 1920s was unchanged, whilewhite stature rose from the early twentieth century after decline during the latenineteenth century.24
From first contact, Europeans were impressed with Maori physique in generaland stature in particular. In 1767, the English explorer, James Cook, wasimpressed by Maori stature. He wrote in his journals that Maori were ‘ratherabove than under the common size.’ Anthropologists have shown that PacificIsland and Maori populations were taller than Europeans before 1800. Skeletalevidence suggests that Maori heights fluctuated over the centuries before Euro-pean contact. When Maori arrived in New Zealand about 1,000 years ago, theyfound a land abundant in large, protein-rich birds, such as the moa. There wereno significant mammalian sources of protein. When the large birds becameextinct through hunting around 1600, Maori diets changed, with the primarysource of protein being shellfish. Skeletal remains show height declined after thistransition in food sources.25
In the nineteenth century, there were huge changes in the protein and othernutrients available to Maori. Early in the century, most Maori lived in settledcommunities of several hundred people, growing crops and obtaining protein
19 Haines, Growing incomes, shrinking people.20 Baten and Murray, Heights of men and women; Koepke and Baten, Biological standard of living.21 de Souza, Height, health and living standards; Whitwell et al., Height, health and economic
growth; Shlomowitz, Did the mean height.22 We refer to New Zealanders of European descent as Pakeha in the rest of this paper. Blakely et al.,
23 Komlos, Access to food; Prince and Steckel, Nutritional success; Steckel and Prince, Tallest in theworld.
24 Nicholas et al., Welfare of indigenous and white Australians.25 Houghton, First New Zealanders; Houghton, Great Ocean; Houghton et al., Estimation of stature.
largely from fish and shellfish. European settlers introduced commercial farming,which Maori successfully adopted.26 European settlement also introduced Maorito new sources of protein from dairy products and farmed animals such as pigs,cows, and sheep.27 The wars between Maori and European settlers in the 1860sand 1870s deprived them of the best agricultural land. Most Maori continued tolive largely in small rural communities, separate from the Pakeha population, butinteracting with the commercial agricultural economy for some of their needs.28
There is little systematic evidence about Maori health prior to and duringcolonisation. Reports from the 1880s and 1890s suggest Maori health was quitepoor. Tuberculosis, for example, was quite common, with Maori often living indamp conditions and close proximity to their neighbours.29 The decline of Maoripopulation until 1896 is consistent with the hypothesis of deteriorating healthunder the impact of colonisation. At 42,000 in 1896, the Maori population wasestimated to have halved in 60 years.30 The population recovered rapidly in thetwentieth century, with delayed declines in fertility, compared with the Pakehapopulation. Measured by mortality, Maori had very poor health in the nineteenthcentury that recovered in the twentieth century.
Historical research on Maori health between the 1880s and 1920s has takenpoor health as given, and concentrated on government policy towards Maorihealth. But no systematic measures of the health of living Maori have beenpublished for the period before 1950.31 Government departments and theMedical School at Otago carried out some surveys of Maori health before WorldWar II. While some of this research was published, there were no systematiccomparisons of Maori and Pakeha health until the 1960s. Further complicationsarise because the Maori were more likely to live in rural areas than Pakeha, whichshould have provided a better nutrition and disease environment.32 One possibil-ity is that rural lifestyle allowed Maori to retain nutritious diets, but they were stillsusceptible to new diseases with poorer living conditions than rural Pakeha.
By contrast, nineteenth-century Pakeha appeared to enjoy good health byinternational standards. The demographic evidence of rapid population growthled contemporaries in the late nineteenth century to argue that New Zealand wasan unusually healthy society. As the most remote destination for nineteenth-century migrants, boosters of New Zealand had incentives to overstate the healthand wealth that awaited the migrant. The received wisdom of New Zealand’sunusual healthiness was given scholarly credence by Alfred K. Newman in 1882,whose article ‘Is New Zealand a healthy country? – an enquiry with statistics’
26 Petrie, Chiefs of Industry.27 Pigs had been released by Captain Cook on his first visit to New Zealand, and were wild as well
as domesticated.28 Belich, New Zealand Wars.29 Dow, Maori Health.30 Pool, Te Iwi Maori.31 Dow, Maori Health; Lange, May the People Live.32 Pool, Te Iwi Maori.
proceeded quickly to answer ‘Yes’.33 Boosters of New Zealand as a destination forthe migrant emphasised the crude mortality statistics. This comparison favouredNew Zealand, which had a young population in the 1870s and 1880s.34
While the promise of good health in New Zealand may have been overstated topotential migrants, age-adjusted mortality rates shows New Zealand did havelower mortality than Britain or the United States.35 Crafts showed that in 1913,New Zealand had the world’s highest level on the Human Development Index.36
Another measure of good health was an early decline in Pakeha infant mortality.37
Improved longevity before World War II owed little to medical interventions.38
New Zealand’s high level of human development came not from effectivepolicy, but from a benign public health environment. New Zealand’s cities weresmall, with the four largest cities having populations between 40,000 and 70,000in 1901. Population densities were low compared with European and NorthAmerican cities. Tenements and apartments were uncommon.39 Most cities,situated on the ocean, were able to discharge their waste into the sea whileobtaining water upstream from rivers and reservoirs. Advantages of location andlow population densities probably explain whatever good health the Pakehapopulation enjoyed compared with contemporaries in North America andEurope.
And yet New Zealand cities were not especially clean or healthy. As PamelaWood has recently shown, they just had smaller areas of poor housing thanelsewhere.40 All four largest cities had areas of cramped, damp housing that wereeyesores to the middle class and unhealthy for their inhabitants.41 Unhealthyliving conditions affected some Pakeha, but many Maori. Most Maori lived inrural areas, which conferred health benefits. However, in areas where Maori hadlost a lot of land to European settlers, Maori often lived in damp, unsanitaryconditions. Only a few generations past first contact, Maori had still not acquireda degree of immunity to the diseases which the Europeans had brought with themto New Zealand. While infant and child mortality for Europeans declined rapidlyfrom the 1890s, Maori mortality below the age of 15 remained high and wellabove the Pakeha.
In summary, various measures of living standards suggest that Pakeha men maywell be taller than other European-descended men in Australia and NorthAmerica. Exact evidence on Maori living standards is limited to mortality, asevidenced by population decline. After the wars of the 1860–70s, Maori popula-tion decline continued, probably related to poor housing and diet, and infectious
33 Newman, Healthy country.34 Pool et al., New Zealand Family.35 Maddison, World Economy.36 Crafts, Human Development Index.37 Mein Smith, Truby King.38 McKeown, Modern Rise; Preston, Changing relation.39 Ferguson, Building.40 Wood, Dirt.41 Husbands, Poverty.
diseases. These factors are likely to have reduced average stature in the Maoripopulation. However, just three to four generations earlier, early Europeans hadnoted that Maori were unusually tall. These countervailing observations suggestthat in the late nineteenth-century Maori stature was probably declining towardsPakeha stature.
PRELIMINARY DESCRIPTION OF THE DATA
Our principal sources of data for adult height and weight are military recruitingrecords from World War I. Although the war lasted just four years, the NewZealand-born men who served were born between 1865 and 1900, giving usinformation on three decades of change in living standards. Military records arewidely used in international research on stature and weight. Although minimumphysical requirements for conscription included height, it is possible to adjuststatistically for sample truncation.42 New Zealand results will be compared withthe extensive international findings.43 The main limitation of military records isthat military service is largely performed by men. However, the causes of declin-ing height – poorer net nutrition during the growth period – are shared by bothsexes. Indeed, international research shows that male stature is more sensitive tomalnutrition and disease, suggesting the bias towards men in historical sourcescould even be useful.44
Throughout the war, both height and weight were recorded in the medicalexaminations that accompanied enlistment for both volunteers and conscripts inthe New Zealand Expeditionary Forces. Body composition was consistently mea-sured across the military records. The New Zealand military had measured menwithout shoes since the South African War of 1899–1902, if not before.45 In theWorld War I data that our analysis focuses on, heights were measured to thequarter inch. It is less clear how recruits were weighed. Photos suggest that at leastin the ‘main centres’ – the cities of Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch, andDunedin – that balance weight scales were used.
We use two samples of New Zealand soldiers in this paper, which we refer to asthe ‘genealogical sample’ and the ‘casualties sample’. We give a brief descriptionof the sources of the samples and some of the difficulties in constructing a samplefor research, before discussing their composition. The genealogical sample hasbeen constructed from the personnel records of New Zealanders serving in WorldWar I, which only became available to the public in 2005. Both the original paper
42 Komlos, How to.43 Steckel, Heights and human welfare.44 Bogin, Patterns of Human Growth, pp. 232–4; Stinson, Sex differences in environmental sensitivity,
pp. 130–2.45 Attestation of William Eli Johnston, 1902. AABK/18805/W5515, Box 29, Record 2872.
schedules and microfilm copies of 122,357 personnel files have been transferredfrom the New Zealand Defence Force (NZDF) to Archives New Zealand. Thesefiles cover 95 per cent of the men who served in New Zealand forces in World WarI. The personnel files of approximately 6,000 servicemen (and women) whoremained in the NZDF after 1920 have not yet been transferred to Archives NewZealand. Because of the fragile condition of some of the paper files, there is nopublic access to the original records. Moreover, the microfilm reels contain bothpublicly available World War I files and files from World War II. Files from WorldWar II remain restricted, as not all men who served have died. Thus, withoutspecial permission, the microfilmed files are not available for public research.Instead, Archives New Zealand allows people to request paper copies of WorldWar I records. The records are printed from the microfilm and made available tothe person requesting them and become available for public research. Genealo-gists have requested most of the records that have become available, althoughother researchers have been using the World War I files to study Pacific Island andMaori men who served in the New Zealand forces. Thus, our data contains 368indigenous Pacific Island-born men who served in New Zealand forces in WorldWar I. The genealogical sample is likely to be biased towards men who survivedthe war, and produced descendents who are interested in researching their ances-try. With further funding and access to the microfilm, we are currently augment-ing our data with systematic random sampling procedures.
The ‘casualties sample’ has been constructed from the Roll of Honour of NewZealand men who died in World War I.46 This sample may also be biased, if therisk of being killed in action correlated for some reason with stature. Moreover, alarge share of the records is not usable for even a basic analysis, missing at leastone of height, birth date or birthplace. The casualties sample was transcribedfrom 93 bound volumes of forms that were filled out when a serviceman was killedin action. Height was meant to be transcribed on the casualty records from theenlistment records.47 It is understandable that during wartime, transcribing infor-mation such as height and birthplace, available on other forms, and not obviouslyrelated to war service, was a low priority. Thus, of the 16,302 New Zealandservicemen killed in action, we have usable information on stature for just 9,575,while only 3,744 records specify both height and birthplace.
To date, we have collected more than 16,000 records from World War I: 9,575in the casualties sample and 6,575 in the genealogical sample. The completedataset includes many men born outside New Zealand or the Pacific Islands whoare not included in the analysis. For both samples, we have information on thefollowing variables: full name, place of birth, date of birth, date of enlistment,occupation at enlistment, military identification number, and height and weight.In the genealogical sample, we have additional information on marital status,
46 Active Fatal Casualty Forms World War I, 1915–1919. 93 volumes. AABK 519, Archives NewZealand, Wellington.
educational achievement, and religion. Other medical and health information inthe World War I files was not uniformly collected. Many of the men were assessedas having ‘good’ health along various dimensions of health. If any aspect of aman’s health was poor, further details from medical tests are sometimes given.Detailed quantitative health information is available selectively for the less-fitrecruits, which make it of limited use for analysing overall population health. Inour multivariate analysis, we only use cases that have complete information aboutbirth date, birthplace, occupation, and body size. In most of our analyses, weexclude men who enlisted before they reached the age of 21 years because manyof them were still growing. In itself, this observation that men were still growingin their late teens is an indicator of living standards below current ones. Inwell-nourished modern populations, many men attain adult height before age20.48 We also exclude men older than 49 years in order to minimise any compli-cation arising from the diminution of height at advanced ages. We restrict oursample to those born in New Zealand and in the nearby Pacific Islands – Fiji,Samoa, Tahiti, Tonga, Niue, Norfolk Island, Gilbert Islands, Society Islands, andthe Cook Islands. We analyse the two groups separately so that we can interpretadult height as a reflection of early life conditions in the region of birth.
We discard men who were born outside New Zealand or the Pacific Islands, butenlisted in the New Zealand army. Nearly one-third (32 per cent) of the men whowould have been of an eligible age to serve in World War I were born outside NewZealand. Thirty percent of our genealogical sample was foreign-born, very closeto the proportion in the eligible population.49 Immigrants may have arrived at ayoung age, with their attained height reflecting the New Zealand nutritionalenvironment. However, without longitudinal data, we cannot distribute child-hood influences into a part reflecting the experience elsewhere, and another partreflecting experience in New Zealand and the islands.50 About one in eight of oursample was born in Great Britain. British migration to New Zealand peaked in theearly-1860s and mid-1870s.51 Recruits in World War I – mostly born in the 1880sand 1890s – were more likely to be New Zealand-born than men enlisting in theSouth African war, and men born in the 1870s enlisting in World War I. Thereare also 261 Australian-born men in the dataset. During the late 1890s and earlytwentieth century, there was high outmigration from Australia to New Zealand, asNew Zealand’s real incomes grew faster than in Australia.52
After exclusions for missing information, age and foreign birthplace, we are leftwith the 3,501 observations in the genealogical sample and 2,868 in the casualtiessample, summarised in Table 1–3. About 10 per cent of the genealogical samplecomes from the Pacific islands; the remainder were New Zealand-born. Pacific
48 Bogin, Patterns of Human Growth.49 Government Statistician, 1911 Census, pp. xii, 228–9.50 Initial investigations suggest that it would be feasible to trace some of these British migrants back
through their migration, and into the British civil and census records.51 Phillips and Hearn, Settlers.52 Borrie, Peopling.
Island and Maori men were less likely to be casualties in World War I becausethey mostly served in a support unit, the Pioneer Battalion, which was notengaged in frontline service.53 In other respects, the characteristics of the twosamples are broadly similar.
The New Zealand-born are equally split between the North Island and theSouth Island, reflecting the approximately equal populations of the two mainislands in the late nineteenth century. There was no appreciable difference instature between men born in either island. There is no unambiguous way todistinguish men who were entirely or largely of European descent (Pakeha)from Maori population indigenous to New Zealand. We rely on Maori names,
53 Cowan, Maoris; Pugsley, Te Hokowhitu a Tu.
Table 1. New Zealand expeditionary force data, genealogical sample, summarystatistics
Sample N Age(years)
Height(inches)
Weight(pounds)
Birthyear
New Zealand-born 3,189 Median 26 68 150 1889Mean 27.3 67.9 151 1888Coefficient of variation 0.21 0.04 0.12 0.003
Pacific Island-born 312 Median 24 68 159 1892Mean 24.9 67.9 160 1892Coefficient of variation 0.16 0.03 0.12 0.002
Indigenous name 373 Median 24 68 160 1893Mean 24.9 67.8 162 1891Coefficient of variation 0.16 0.03 0.11 0.002
Note: Men with an indigenous name are included within the New Zealand and Pacific Island catego-ries, in addition to being reported separately in the bottom line.
Table 2. New Zealand expeditionary force casualties data, summary statistics
Sample N Age(years)
Height(inches)
Weight(pounds)
Birthyear
New Zealand-born 2,853 Median 27 68.0 150 1890Mean 27.8 67.9 148 1888Coefficient of variation 0.21 0.04 0.12 0.003
Pacific Island-born 15 Median 23 68.0 160 1892Mean 24.9 67.4 159 1891Coefficient of variation 0.15 0.02 0.10 0.002
Indigenous name 144 Median 22 68.0 160 1893Mean 24.3 68.4 159 1891Coefficient of variation 0.18 0.03 0.11 0.002
Note: Men with an indigenous name are included within the New Zealand and Pacific Island catego-ries, in addition to being reported separately in the bottom line.
principally family names, to indicate ethnicity. This strategy is conservative andwill exclude Maori with European names. At present, our Maori sample is toosmall to distinguish statistically between different iwi (tribes).
We have identified all men with apparently indigenous names. For conve-nience, we refer to them as indigenous, though there are some caveats to theinterpretation of these results. More than a century of interaction meant some inour sample are likely to have both European and Maori ancestry. Moreover, agenetically ‘pure’ Maori could adapt a European name, and a European mighttake a Maori name. We consider these relatively uncommon. By identifyingMaori with European names as European, our analysis will underestimate thedifference in stature between the two groups.
In defence of our procedure, our analysis comes from a tradition that typicallypresumes environmental influences (nutrition, disease, workload) are more influ-ential than genetic influences on adult stature.54 There is little modern evidence onstature differences between Maori and European in New Zealand. Recent healthand nutrition surveys have reported a secular trend towards increasing heightin cohorts born since the 1940s, but have not distinguished separate trendsamong ethnic groups.55 Research on anthropometric differences between NewZealand ethnic groups has been focused on understanding body mass and bodyfatness differences.56 This modern research takes ethnicity as a self-ascribedcharacteristic. By using names as an indicator of ethnicity in our military samples,
54 Silventoinen, Determinants of variation, pp. 272–4.55 Ministry of Health, Tracking the Obesity Epidemic, p. 75.56 Rush et al., Body size.
Table 3. Sample exclusion due to missing fields
Casualties Genealogical
All records Complete height records 9,501 6,137Known to be New Zealand-born† 3,403 4,299Aged 21–49 and �64 inches 2,731 3,051
Notes: †Birthplace information is missing for many men in the casualties sample. ‡Men may beexcluded from the sample for both reasons, as the restrictions are not mutually exclusive.
we approximate self-identified ethnicity as closely as possible given the differentdata collection methods. Within this framework, the precise genetic compositionof a group of an individual matters less than how she or he lived, especially as achild. The reporting of an indigenous name probably does point to someone wholived within and identified with the indigenous community, growing up in a Maorienvironment. This social and environmental influence is what we wish to capture.
Men who grew up in an indigenous community and presented for enlistmentwith European names will be invisible to us. The proportion of such people withinthe European-descended but New Zealand-born community was probably smallin the early twentieth century. Inter-marriage between Maori and Pakeha wasaccepted and known by both groups, but did not occur at a high rate across thecountry. The South Island Maori tribe Ngai Tahu inter-married with Europeansat a higher rate than larger tribes in the North Island.57 The analytical concern iswhether Maori who took on European names were systematically different fromthose who did not. At the moment, we have no way to address this concern. Forall of these reasons, we regard our tabulations and analysis that rely on theindigenous indicator as merely indicative of broad patterns and tendencies.
A greater complication is that the indigenous Pacific Islanders who served inthe New Zealand Expeditionary Forces hailed from a wide variety of islands, somethousands miles distant from others. Not all Pacific islands are the same, and notall indigenous groups were closely related to each other. Organising them as onecategory simply because they were not of European origin creates a complexcategory of diverse individuals who might not have recognised themselves ashaving much, if anything, in common.
The summary evidence in Tables 1 and 2 suggests that the Pacific Islanders –with both indigenous and European names – were younger than the NewZealanders at enlistment and by implication were born later. On average, theywere of comparable height but heavier. The mean and median of both height andweight was similar for all groups, suggesting that the indicators of physical staturewere not strongly skewed. This is unsurprising for height; most studies of latenineteenth-century populations find a near-normal distribution. Evidence forweight is less commonly available, but studies of late twentieth-century birthcohorts typically find mean weight is skewed to the right, reflecting the presenceof a small but significant number of people with large body mass. Apparently, thistendency was limited or non-existent in nineteenth-century New Zealand.
The near-normality of height distribution for those born in New Zealand isclear from Figures 1 and 2. There are two principal exceptions to an otherwiseremarkably normal-looking pattern. The proportion of people reporting theheight of 71 inches (180 cm) is smaller than expected. It is likely that this is afunction of heights being rounded up to 6 feet (72 inches), and reflects instances ofimprecise measurement. We plan to investigate more closely, and re-examine our
57 Callister et al., Ethnic Intermarriage in New Zealand, pp. 11–2; Wanhalla, ‘One White Man I Like VeryMuch’.
treatment of half-inch increments. The second exception is a small but noticeableunder-representation of those 160 cm and shorter. An obvious explanation here isthe stated minimum height requirement of 162.5 cm (64 inches at the time).
The coefficient of variation indicates that characteristics for Pacific Islanders asalso those with an indigenous name are bunched more closely around the meanthan for Pakeha. In part, this would appear to arise from the more limiteddispersion of age among indigenous-designated records and those born in thePacific Islands, who were disproportionately indigenous.
PRELIMINARY ANALYSIS OF PATTERNS IN ADULT HEIGHT
Our goal in the analysis is to assess the extent of social differentials and changeover time in stature. Because of the greater availability of additional socioeco-nomic information, we focus our discussion on results from the genealogicalsample. We must take account of the minimum height requirement of 64 inchesfor service in the New Zealand Expeditionary Force (NZEF). Admittedly, somemen taller than the threshold were rejected for service on the basis of being unfitfor reasons other than stature, just as some men shorter than 64 inches were
0
0.05
0.1
0.15
0.2
De
nsity
60 65 70 75 80hgt
Figure 1. Frequency distribution of height for men born in New Zealand and aged21–49 at the time of enlistment in the New Zealand Expeditionary Forces – genealogi-cal sample.
permitted to serve. Although the truncation was inconsistent, the frequency dis-tributions in Figures 1 and 2 make clear that it had some effect. Accordingly, wediscard all records of men shorter than 64 inches and estimate with a maximum-likelihood truncated regression model.
We capture change over time by partitioning the sample into men born in the1860s and 1870s (10 per cent of the sample), 1880s (42 per cent) and 1890s (48 percent). As noted above, evidence of declining height during late nineteenth centuryurban and industrial development is reported from Australia, Canada, and theUnited States, the three most obvious societies for comparison with New Zealand,as well as others.58 Hence, there is interest to ascertain if New Zealand experi-enced similar stagnation in stature.
We examine the influence of socioeconomic status via occupations organisedinto five classes: professional, managerial and clerical (17 per cent in the genea-logical sample); farmer (21 per cent); farm labourer (12 per cent); other labourersand servants (14 per cent); and all other (36 per cent). The ‘other’ category islargely made up of men working in manufacturing, transport, and utilities. Our
58 Cranfield and Inwood, Great transformation; Komlos, Shrinking; Steckel and Haurin, AmericanMidwest; Whitwell et al., Height, health and economic growth.
0
0.05
0.1
0.15
0.2D
ens
ity
60 65 70 75 80 85hgt
Figure 2. Frequency distribution of height for those born in New Zealand and aged21–49 at the time of enlistment in the New Zealand Expeditionary Forces – casualtiessample.
occupational categories are derived from the HISCO coding scheme.59 The‘other’ category was more likely to have been employed in cities. The soldier’soccupational class is assumed to correlate with his father’s occupational class,giving an indirect measurement of the nutritional circumstances in which thesoldier grew up. Occupation is a very rough socioeconomic indicator. The pre-sumption of inter-generational persistence further reduces precision. Neverthe-less, in the absence of other indicators, we examine the hypothesis that theseoccupation-based socioeconomic groupings capture the net effect of various influ-ences on adult height.
We hypothesise that rural occupations indicate access as children to a lowerrelative price of food and limited exposure to infectious disease. The professionaland clerical occupations suggest a higher class standing and family circumstancespermitting greater spending on food and healthy housing. We anticipate that bothgroups will be taller, on average. Soldiers born to fathers with labouring occupa-tions, especially those in urban areas and lacking in specific skills, probably grewup with lower family income in less healthy environments and consequently wereshorter as adults. Occupation correlates partially with the indigenous identityindicator discussed above. Nevertheless, to the extent that men with indigenousnames report a variety of occupations, inclusion of the indigenous identity vari-able identifies picks up a ‘pure’ effect of being indigenous over and above anyeffects of ethnic clustering in particular occupations. Nearly half (45 per cent) ofthe Maori men in our sample were farmers or farm labourers.
The estimation results reported in Tables 4 and 5 indicate that, as expected,farmers and the professional-clerical class in New Zealand were much taller thanthe omitted category ‘all other occupations’. Farm labourers also were taller, butby a smaller margin. The stature of ordinary labourers and servants was indistin-guishable statistically from the omnibus omitted class. None of the occupationaleffects were significant for the Pacific Islanders possibly because of small samplesize.
Those with an indigenous Maori name were no taller than Pakeha. The twosamples provide slightly different estimates, with the genealogical sample indicat-ing Maori were slightly shorter than Pakeha (Table 4), and the casualties sampleindicating Maori were slightly taller (Table 5). Neither result was statisticallysignificant. Specification of the indigenous marker had no discernible impact onany of the other coefficients. At least in this sample, there is no evidence thatMaori physique was particularly impressive relative to Europeans. Whether or notit was negatively affected by colonisation depends on stature in earlier generationsfor which we have no systematic evidence at present. In a publication shortly afterWorld War I based on a sample of 424 Maori soldiers, Peter Buck suggestedMaori heights had not decreased significantly for men born before 1900.60 Giventhat many Maori were farmers or farm labourers, they would have shared with
59 van Leeuwen et al., Historical International Standard Classification of Occupations.60 Buck, Maori somatology.
Pakeha the height advantages stemming from rural living. However, the overalleffect was that Maori born in the late nineteenth century were not noticeablytaller or shorter than Pakeha.
We cannot assess stature change before the 1870s–80s transition with ourWorld War I data. For this purpose, we examine the files of a small number ofNew Zealand-born South African War soldiers. We divide them into equally sizedgroups of those born 1863–78 (72 observations) and 1879–82 (62 observations).The mean stature of both groups was 174 cm. Sample size and inability to adjustfor confounding factors reduces the value of this evidence, but, at a minimum, wecan say that the South African War records reveal no evidence of changingstature.
The genealogical sample shows that those born in the 1880s were taller thanthose born earlier and later, though the increase in stature of the 1860s and 1870scohort compared with the 1880s cohort was not significant at conventionalconfidence levels. Declining stature from the 1880s to 1890s was marked andstatistically significant. We consider the robustness of these findings with alternate
Table 4. Maximum likelihood analysis of stature, New Zealand expeditionary forcesoldiers 21–49 years at enlistment, born in New Zealand and the Pacific Islands –genealogical sample
New Zealand-born Pacific Island-born
Co-efficient P > |z| Co-efficient P > |z|
Controls for birth cohort and occupationConstant 67.6 0.00 67.1 0.00Born 1870s -0.12 0.52 2.91 0.08Born 1880s (omitted)Born 1890s -0.27 0.02 0.70 0.05Farmer 0.77 0.00 0.27 0.47Farm labourers 0.20 0.25 2.09 0.21Professional/clerical/sales 0.51 0.00 0.53 0.33Labourers other than farm 0.08 0.68 -0.15 0.70Manufacturing, utility and
transport workers (omitted)Controls for birth cohort, occupation and ethnicityConstant 67.6 0.00 67.4 0.00Born 1870s -0.12 0.51 2.84 0.09Born 1880s (omitted)Born 1890s -0.26 0.02 0.73 0.04Farmer 0.77 0.00 0.70 0.12Farm labourers 0.21 0.24 2.02 0.19Professional / clerical /sales 0.51 0.00 0.61 0.27Labourers other than farm 0.07 0.64 0.31 0.51Manufacturing, utility and
transport workers (omitted)Indigenous name -0.13 0.60 -0.73 0.08N for both models 3,051 298
formulations; for example, the 1890s effect may be exaggerated if those aged21–25, all born in the 1890s, had not yet stopped growing. However, systemati-cally raising the minimum age threshold did not remove or reduce the evidence ofstature decline in the 1890s.
The decadal effects follow an intriguingly different pattern for those born in thePacific Islands. Fiji, Samoa, and the Cook Islands were the most common birth-places of Pacific Island men serving in the New Zealand armed forces in WorldWar I. Their 1870s cohort was tallest by a large measure, and again staturediminished from the 1880s to the 1890s. Admittedly, sample size clearly limitswhat can be said about the Pacific Islanders. One relatively clear result is thesubstantial negative coefficient in Table 4 for ‘indigenous name’ of Pacific Island-ers. It appears that among men born in the Pacific Islands, those with a visiblyindigenous name were significantly shorter than others, after controlling forcohort and occupation. The implication is that the social and economic environ-ment of the Pacific Islands was prejudicial to the physical well-being of theindigenous population, relative to that of European descendents, to an extent notapparent in New Zealand.
The casualties sample provides a slightly different picture of the New Zealand-born men. The differentials associated with occupational classes are more pro-nounced. The 1870s effect is similar, but further from significance; the 1890seffect has a different sign, but is further from significance. The indigenous effectalso has the opposite sign, but again it does not differ significantly from zero.Differences between the casualty and genealogical samples may reflect selectionbiases, but a simpler explanation might be that the smaller casualty sample makesit impossible to identify precisely weak effects. The occupational effects are strongand represented in both samples; the decadal and ethnic effects are weaker andtherefore less easily exposed by analysis of the small casualty sample.
Table 5. Maximum likelihood analysis of stature, New Zealand expeditionary forcesoldiers 21–49 years at enlistment, born in New Zealand – casualties data
Regional differences in height are pronounced in some countries. For example,Cranfield and Inwood report significant differences between eastern and westernCanada.61 For the World War I samples, a dummy variable distinguishing theNorth Island from South Island was statistically insignificant, and did not affectany of the other coefficients. The economic history literature emphasises differ-ences in the economic and demographic trajectories of the North and SouthIsland, but adult stature, at least, did not differ systematically. Finally, we alsoconsidered if inclusion of observations for men aged 18–20-year-old with dummyvariables to capture growth effects might reduce standard errors and enhance ourability to test hypotheses. This increases sample size considerably, but does notsystematically affect the pattern of estimated coefficients or improve standarderrors. It appears that the noise introduced by the 18–20 year olds offsets any gainfrom expanding the sample.
Finally, it is possible to make a direct comparison between our estimation anda comparable analysis of Canadian-born soldiers in WWI.62 The similarity of thesource and parallel treatment of the data makes it possible to compare theCanadian and New Zealand soldiers with some precision. The truncation pointdiffers (63 inches in Canada vs. 64 inches in New Zealand), although in principle,the truncated regression adjusts for this effect. We find that a non-farmer born inthe 1880s in New Zealand was 171.7 cm against 171.2 cm in eastern Canada forthe same decade. In fact, this understates the superiority of stature in NewZealand, since its farmer effect was larger, the New Zealand decline into the 1890swas smaller, and the eastern Canadian evidence is for a volunteer while the NewZealand height is for volunteers and conscripts combined. It is not possible tomake a direct comparison with the height of Australians in the same conflictbecause the method of analyzing those data is sufficiently different.63
CONCLUSION
The experience of stature for men born in late nineteenth-century New Zealandwas very different than that of men born a century later. Socioeconomic variationsin height were pronounced for those born in the 1880s and 1890s. One hundredyears later, the differentials were reduced (but not eliminated) by the long-termdiminution of economic inequality, and reduced marginal significance of incomefor height at high income levels.
Another point of contrast is that during the late twentieth century, each gen-eration was significantly taller than the one preceding. This does not appear to betrue for nineteenth-century cohorts. As in Europe and North America, New
61 Cranfield and Inwood, Great transformation.62 Cranfield and Inwood, Great transformation.63 Shlomowitz, Did the mean height; Whitwell et al., Height, health and economic growth; Whitwell
Zealanders born during the 1890s grew up shorter than those born earlier. We donot yet have sufficient data to establish if this is a short-term – perhaps cyclical –effect, or part of a longer trend. It remains clear, though, that any cohort differ-ences were small compared with the occupational effects. This is entirely theopposite of the late twentieth century.
It is useful to situate the dip in height for the 1890s cohort in regional perspec-tive. The 1890s marks the beginning of Australia’s long slow experience of fallingbehind the growth trajectory of other advanced economies.64 Greasley and Oxleyreport evidence of a degree of integration between Australia and New Zealand inthe trans-Tasman labour market.65 Not surprisingly, real wages in New Zealand,as in Australia, experienced during the 1890s a significant pause in their long-termupward trajectory. Whether the 1890s decline – at a minimum, stasis – in staturereflects the effect of real wage movements or of other factors, such as urbanisationin advance of health-related infrastructure investment, is an appropriate focus forfurther research. The dip in stature for those born in the 1890s suggests thepossibility of a shared trans-Tasman experience. Further research may point to awidely shared 1890s experience in the long-term term evolution of the globaleconomy.66
We began the paper recognising the importance of historical origins for Maori–Pakeha health differentials. The evidence of Tables 4 and 5 suggests that Maoristature did not differ from Pakeha stature even after controlling for generationaland occupational effects. There is no evidence in this sample of a Maori advan-tage in physique that would accord with popular qualitative observations from thetime. Yet at this time, there is no indication that after 75 years of formal coloni-sation Maori were significantly shorter than Pakeha.
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