The Heights of French-Canadian, Irish, Scottish and English Populations in Quebec, 1813 to 1847

Type of resource
Authors/collaborators
Title
The Heights of French-Canadian, Irish, Scottish and English Populations in Quebec, 1813 to 1847
Abstract
The authors note that an earlier study indicated that by the end of the nineteenth century, the French Quebecers were appreciably shorter than English speakers. Nothing, however, is known as to the extent and the causes of those differences at earlier points in time. The authors use a novel dataset of heights collected from the records of the Quebec City prison between 1813 and 1847 to survey ethnic differences in heights within the population of Quebec, then known as Lower Canada and, after 1841, Canada East. Using a birth-cohort approach, the authors found that the French-Canadian prisoners were smaller than their English, Scottish and Irish counterparts. The authors point out that all ethnic groups in their dataset exhibit a decline in heights during the time period in question. However, they say, this gap was not as big as it would come to be later in time. French-Canadians are also significantly shorter than Americans, roughly equal to those who remained in the United Kingdom, and taller than the inhabitants of France and Latin America. The authors highlight the key structural economic changes and shocks and discuss their possible impact on the anthropometric data.
Report Number
No: 233/2016
Series Title
[Economic History Working Papers]
Place
London, England
Institution
London School of Economics and Political Science
Date
January 2016
Pages
i-24p.
Language
en
URL
Citation
Arsenault Morin, Alex, Vincent Geloso, and Vadim Kufenko. The Heights of French-Canadian, Irish, Scottish and English Populations in Quebec, 1813 to 1847. [Economic History Working Papers]. London, England: London School of Economics and Political Science, January 2016. https://www.lse.ac.uk/Economic-History/Assets/Documents/WorkingPapers/Economic-History/2016/WP233.pdf.
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