Mexican Body Mass Index Values in the Late-19th-Century American West
Posted: 15 Mar 2007
Abstract
No research has been done on the body mass index values of the 19th-century Mexican population. This paper introduces a new data source of 19th-century Mexican male inmates in American prisons and finds that the majority of Mexican body mass was in the normal range (18.5-24.9). Few Mexicans were underweight or obese by modern standards. Body mass varied little (0-0.9 units) by occupations possibly because criminals probably came from the lower end of the socioeconomic distribution; however, it did vary with crimes for which inmates were incarcerated.
Keywords: Nineteenth-century Mexico, Anthropometrics, Body mass index
JEL Classification: I12, I31, I32, J15, N30, N36, N96
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