Publications
Publications:
'The Determinants of Child Stunting and Shifts in the Growth Pattern of Children: A Long-Run, Global Review', Journal of Economic Surveys, forthcoming (open access).
'Did Smallpox Cause Stillbirths? Maternal Smallpox Infection, Vaccination and Stillbirths in Sweden, 1780-1839', with Sören Edvinsson and Kota Ogasawara, Population Studies, 78, no. 3 (2024), pp. 467-482 (open access).
‘The Effect of Nutritional Status on Historical Infectious Disease Morbidity: Evidence from the London Foundling Hospital, 1892-1919’, History of the Family, 28, no. 2 (2023), pp. 198-228 (open access).
'Health Shocks, Recovery and the First Thousand Days: The Effect of the Second World War on Height Growth in Japanese Children', with Kota Ogasawara and Tim J. Cole, Population and Development Review, 27, no. 4 (2021), pp. 1075-1105 (open access read-only).
‘Infant Feeding and Post-Weaning Health: Evidence from Turn-of-the-Century London’, with Vellore Arthi, Economics and Human Biology, 43 (2021), article number 101065 (open access accepted version).
'The Growth Pattern of British Children, 1850-1975', with Pei Gao, Economic History Review, 74, no. 2 (2021), pp. 341-371 (open access).
'Collider Bias in Economic History Research', Explorations in Economic History, 78 (2020), article number 101356 (open access accepted version).
'Sample-Selection Biases and the Historical Growth Pattern of Children', Social Science History, 44, no. 3 (2020), pp. 417-444 (open access read-only).
'Nutrition, Crowding and Disease among Low-income Households in Tokyo in 1930’, with Kota Ogasawara and Ian Gazeley, Australian Economic History Review, 60, no. 1 (2020), pp. 73-104.
Sir Timothy Coghlan Prize winning article
'Childlessness, Celibacy and Net Fertility in Pre-Industrial England: The Middle-class Evolutionary Advantage', with David de la Croix and Jacob Weisdorf, Journal of Economic Growth, 24, no. 3 (2019), pp. 223-256 (open access read-only).
Previously circulated as '“Decessit sine prole”: Childlessness, Celibacy, and Survival of the Richest’
'Disease and Child Growth in Industrialising Japan: Critical Windows and the Growth Pattern, 1917-1939', with Kota Ogasawara, Explorations in Economic History, 69, no. 1 (2018), pp. 64-80 (open access).
'Getting Under the Skin: Children's Health Disparities as Embodiment of Social Class', with Michael R. Kramer, Jennifer B. Kane, Claire Margerison-Zilko, Jessica Jones-Smith, Katherine King, Pamela Davis-Kean and Joseph G. Grzywacz, Population Research and Policy Review, 36, no. 5 (2017), pp. 671–697 (open access accepted version).
'Fetal Health Stagnation: Have Health Conditions in Utero Improved in the United States and Western and Northern Europe over the past 150 years?', Social Science & Medicine, 179 (2017), pp. 18-26 (open access accepted version).
'Children's Growth in an Adaptive Framework: Explaining the Growth Patterns of American Slaves and Other Historical Populations', Economic History Review, 70, no. 1 (2017), pp. 3-29 (open access accepted version).
'Health, Gender and the Household: Children's Growth in the Marcella Street Home, Boston, MA and the Ashford School, London, UK', Research in Economic History, 30 (2016), pp. 277-361 (open access accepted version).
Technical note on applying the WHO growth standard/reference to historical data available here.
'Optimal fetal growth - a misconception?', with Mark Hanson, Torvid Kiserud, Gerard H.A. Visser and Peter Brocklehurst, American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, 213, no. 3 (2015), pp. 332-34.
Watch a video of Mark Hanson and I discussing this paper and its implications here.
'Una de Cal y Otra de Arena: Building Comparable Real Wages in a Global Perspective', with Robert C. Allen and Tommy E. Murphy, Revista de Historia Económica, 33, no. 1 (2015), pp. 61-75.
'Prices and Production: Agricultural Supply Response in Fourteenth Century England', The Economic History Review, 67, no. 1 (2014), pp. 66-91 (open access accepted version).
T. S. Ashton Prize winning article
'Inescapable Hunger?: Energy Cost Accounting and the Costs of Digestion, Pregnancy and Lactation', The European Review of Economic History, 17, no. 3 (2013), pp. 340-363.
'Real Wages and the Family: Adjusting Real Wages to Changing Demography in Pre-Modern England', Explorations in Economic History, 50, no. 1 (2013), pp. 99-115.
'The Colonial Origins of Divergence in the Americas: A Labour Market Approach', with Robert C. Allen and Tommy E. Murphy, The Journal of Economic History, 72, no. 4 (2012), pp. 863-894.
Policy Briefs and Conference Reports:
‘Stunting: Past, Present, Future’, Policy Brief and Conference Report (2018).
‘Beyond Birth Weight: Measuring Early Life Health Conditions Past, Present and Future’, with Mark Hanson, Conference Report (2015).
Other Publications:
Book review of Kyle Harper, Plagues upon the Earth: Disease and the Course of Human History, in The Economic History Review, 76, no. 3 (2023), pp. 979-81. (open access read-only).
Dissertation summary, Journal of Economic History, 75, no. 2 (2015), pp. 558-62.
'Review of periodical literature on continental Europe from 1700 published in 2013', with Matthias Morys, Markus Lampe and Kerstin Enflo, The Economic History Review (2015), pp. E1-E45.
My contribution covered the topics of living standards and demography.
Book review of Roderick Floud, Robert W. Fogel, Bernard Harris and Sok Chul Hong, The Changing Body: Health, Nutrition, and Human Development in the Western World since 1700, in Continuity and Change, 28, no. 2 (2013), pp. 318-20.
'Evaluating the Effectiveness of Yield-Raising Strategies in Medieval England: An Econometric Approach', University of Oxford Discussion Papers in Economic and Social History, no. 90 (2011).
Book review of Joyce Burnette, Gender, Work and Wages in Industrial Revolution Britain in Technology and Culture, 52 (2011), pp. 195-6.