Social change, height, and body mass in Victorian youth, 1805-1914

A corpus of height studies from the period 1805-1914 was assembled. In the first of three studies the data were assessed for autocorrelation and for departure from linearity. In the second study, heights indexed to the P50 values identified by Tanner, Whitehouse and Takaishi (1966) were regressed on three economic variables, consecutively, in the presence of three ecological measures. In the third study, an estimate of Quetelet's index (w/h2) was calculated for males in the years 1832-1911. Implications were derived from the analyses.