Tracking Well-Being by Population Height
A Cross-National Comparison
Structural-demographic theory, which explains why complex societies periodically get into “End Times”, was initially developed for pre-industrial states. When I decided to apply it to contemporary societies in early 2000s, I understood that the theory would have to be substantially modified to take account of how the Industrial Revolution changed the structure of human societies. One of my assumptions, following the general belief, held by social scientists, was that we live in post-Malthusian times. Thus, I expected that biological measures of well-being, such as average life expectancy and average population height, which served as very useful indicators of immiseration in past cases, would not do the same for contemporary societies.
This assumption turned out to be spectacularly wrong. Two posts in the series The Structural-Demographic State of America (Well-being/Immiseration and Health and Health Insurance) discussed the recent trends in American life expectancy (not good). Today I will talk about the other proxy for biological well-being—average population stature.
