Richard White devotes a chapter of his new book on
Reconstruction and the Gilded Age, The
Republic for Which It Stands, to declining standards of living during the
Gilded Age.
White writes that
“By the most basic
standards—life span, infant death rate and bodily stature, which reflected childhood
health and nutrition—American life grew worse over the course of the nineteenth
century. Although economists have insisted that real wages were rising during
most of the Gilded Age, a people who celebrated their progress were, fact, going
backwards—growing shorter and dying earlier—until the 1890s.” (page 475)
“The average life
expectancy of a white man dropped from the 1790s until the last decade of the nineteenth
century. A slight uptick at midcentury proved fleeting, nor was it certain that
the smaller rise in 1890 would be permanent.” “What this added up to was that
an average white ten-year-old American boy in 1880, born at the beginning of
the Gilded Age and living through it, could expect to die at age forty-eight.
His height would be 5 feet, 5 inches. He would be shorter and have a briefer
life than his Revolutionary forebears.” “Infant mortality worsened in many
cities after 1880.” (page 479)
White also notes the difficulty of creating historical
statistics but suggests that
“When these
statistics all point in a similar direction, they are worth of some attention.”
In general, White bases his interpretation on excellent work
done by economic historians. I do, however, want to argue that there is less consensus
than he seems to suggest. In other words, the statistics do not all point in a similar
direction when it comes to the Gilded Age.
I also want to point out there is a miscalculation in the statement
about height. White relies on Costa (2015) for the evidence on height; he includes
a version of the graph from Costa (see below) in which one can see that the
series hits its lowest point in 1890 at 169.1 cm, which translates to 5 feet
six and a half inches. I am sure that I would make many more grievous errors in
a 940 page book, but I had already seen the number repeated once as if it were
fact.
Nevertheless, the overall picture that White presents of material
well being during the Gilded Age is consistent with picture in the graph. Clearly
the most noteworthy feature of the graph is the decrease in average height and
life expectancy during the nineteenth century. The average height and life
expectancy fell relative to colonial ancestors before beginning to rise again
in the late nineteenth century. The timing of the movements in the series seem
to be consistent with each other.
Source: Costa, Dora L. "Health and
the Economy in the United States from 1750 to the Present." Journal
of economic literature 53, no. 3 (2015): 503-70.
I want to argue that the evidence of declining living
standards in the Gilded Age is not as consistent as White suggests. Estimating life expectancy in
the United States during the nineteenth century is extremely difficult and different
approaches have produced different estimates. They all suggest that life
expectancy fell during the nineteenth century, but they do not all estimate
that life expectancy reached its lowest point in the late, as opposed to the
mid, nineteenth century. Estimating average
heights is also difficult, and recent work suggests that the series reproduced
by White may overestimate the extent of the decline and place the low point too
late in the nineteenth century.
The United States did not have a death
registry for the entire country until 1933. Some states and localities
registered deaths, but we are left with questions about how representative they
are. One innovative approach to the problem has been to use genealogical
records (see Fogel 1986). Beginning in 1850 the Census began to ask
about people that had died in the last year, which can then be used to
calculate life expectancy. On the numerous shortcomings of both types of data
see Hacker (2010).
Source: Hacker 2010
The above figure is from Hacker 2010 and presents four
different series of estimates of life expectancy at age 20. Only the Haines
series based on census data shows in the late nineteenth century. Both the Pope
and Kunze series bottom out in the 1860s.
Source: Hacker 2010
The mortality rates for several large cities also do not
seem consistent with worsening conditions during the Gilded Age. There is a
reduced incidence of large spikes in mortality, though there also isn’t a clear
trend toward declining mortality rates until late in the 19th
century (See Haines 2001).
The nineteenth century height estimates are based, for the
most part, upon a large sample of Union Army soldiers. I say for the most part
because late nineteenth century estimates are based upon an extrapolation from
Ohio National Guard data. The figure below from Costa and Steckel shows the
part of the series that is inferred from the Ohio National Guard data.
Source: Costa and Steckel, Long Term Trends in Health,
Welfare, and Economic Growth in the United States
Economic historians have long recognized that there are potential
problems with these estimates. The problem is not just that they might be
biased, but that the bias might change over time. On the other hand, if shorter
than average people became more likely to join the army or the national guard
then our estimates might suggest a decrease in average heights that did not
occur.
Although the potential for selection bias was known, later
research found similar patterns for the antebellum period in a variety of other
populations, for instance Ohio prison inmates (Maloney and Carson 2008) and Pennsylvania
prison inmates (Carson 2008).
Bodenhorn,
Guinane and Mroz (2017) recently argued that sample selection bias is a significant
problem in the height data. Ariell Zimran
has attempted to match soldiers with their census records and use the
information to adjust for selection bias. He concluded that, after adjusting for
selection bias, there was still a decrease in average height of about .64
inches between 1832 and 1860.
Matthias Zehetmayer took a different approach. He developed
a more comprehensive sample of soldiers. Because his observation extended into
the late nineteenth century he did not have to rely on an extrapolation for the
years after the Civil War. The graph below compares Zehetmayers estimates with
previous estimates. His estimates follow the original until you get to
the extrapolation from the Ohio national guard. Zehetmayer finds increases in the 1870s and 1880s rather than a steep decline.
Source:
Zehetmayer 2011
There are a lot of evidence pointing to a decline in height,
but there is no consensus that about when that decline began to reverse or even
if it might be explained by selection bias. Zehetmayer's recent estimates do,
however, seem to be consistent with the life expectancy estimates of Pope,
Kunze, and Hacker, reaching a low point in the 1860s or 1870s rather than 1890.
I think White was right to emphasize the difficulties involved
in creating historical statistics. Like other interpretations of history our
knowledge of material well-being in the past has to be derived from the bits
and pieces that were left behind, even if they are not ideally suited to the
task. Although estimates are very consistent regarding a declining standard of
living in the ante-bellum period, they are much less consistent about a decline
during the Gilded Age. The most recent estimates of both height and life
expectancy seem toward rising standards of living during the late nineteenth
century.
