Heights and Real Wages in Colonial Kerala

Antonia Strachey DPhil Candidate in Economic and

Social History Nuffield College

University of Oxford

Introduction• Aim: To better understand Kerala’s path of

development • In the process of constructing a new panel dataset of

on infant mortality, real wages and heights from the late colonial Travancore.

• Travancore was an early leader in reducing infant mortality and stunting.

• Sharing the preliminary findings of the first part of this data

• Project focuses on Princely State of Travancore: makes up around 2/3 of modern Kerala

Kerala and Stunting Today

In the latest NFHS survey of India, 2005-6, Kerala was the state with by far the lowest stunting of children under 5 years.

Region % Under 5s Stunted

Delhi 20.4

West Bengal 17.8

Karnataka 20.5

Kerala 6.5

Uttar Pradesh 32.4

All India 23.7

*Stunted refers to those who are more than 3 standard deviations below norms of height for age

Source: NFHS 2005-6 Report

Kerala History

• Modern state composed of the Princely States of Travancore and Cochin and the British Indian district of Malabar.

• Travancore state corresponds to about 2/3 of the modern state of Kerala including the capital.

• Indirect vs direct rule.

Kerala History• Institutional context: Recent work by economists Banerjee and Iyer

(Iyer, ‘The Long Term Impact of Colonial Rule’, The Review of Economics and Statistics, 2010, and Banerjee and Iyer, ‘History, Institutions and Economic Performance’, American Economic Review, 2005)has found evidence of colonial era institutions influencing development outcomes today.

• One of their findings is that regions that were indirectly ruled, such as Travancore, have better public good provision today than former British India.

• Qualitative histories reveal Travancore to have been an unusually progressive state which invested heavily in education and health and was the most literate region in India in our period, as it is today. (Desai, ‘Indirect British Rule, State Formation and Welfarism in Kerala, India 1860-1957 “, Social Science History, 2005)

• The state also had an advanced bureaucracy which began collecting detailed statistics in the early C20th.

Data

• New data sources on adult heights, real wages and infant mortality

• Height data comprises height and a caste data of 1351 males born between 1910 and 1941 constructed as part of master’s thesis.

• Real wages and infant mortality dataset is still under construction. I hope to collect data corresponding to the height data. At present I have patchy data for the 1930s and 1940s

Indian Anthropometric History

• A subdiscipline of economic history has grown up in the last few decades trading this history of heights, known as anthropometric history

• The first large scale anthropometric history of early C20th India was Baten and Guntupalli, Explorations in Economic History, (2006). Their paper documents trends in mean male height in North India between 1914 and 1944.

• They also find that the difference in heights between the highest and lowest castes was relatively small – around 7cms.

• Strachey, MPhil, University of Oxford 2009 completes the early C20th picture by uncovering similar data for southern India.

• Both Baten and Guntupalli and Strachey find that mean male heights were largely stagnant between 1910 and 1940.

Indian Anthropometric History

19101912

19141916

19181920

19221924

19261928

19301932

19341936

19381940

19421944

1620

1625

1630

1635

1640

1645

SouthNorth

Birth Year

Heig

ht (m

m)

Heights in North and South India 1910-1944

Sources: Strachey, Caste, Public Policy and Health: Living Standards in South India, Unpublished MPhil thesis, University of Oxford, 2009, and Guntupalli and Baten, ‘Development and Inequality of Heights’.

N=39,000

Travancore Height Data

• In contrast to the national picture, in Travancore there is an increasing overall trend in height

1910-1914

1915-1919

1920-1924

1925-1929

1930-1934

1935-1939

1940-1945

1500

1520

1540

1560

1580

1600

1620

1640

1660

1680

1700

Height in Travancore By Caste

Other CastesScheduled CastesChristiansNayarsBrahmins

Source: Strachey, Caste, Public Policy and Health: Living Standards in South India, Unpublished MPhil thesis, University of Oxford, 2009

N=1350

Wages

• Money wages have been deflated by rice prices to give ‘rice wages’.

• Wages are decreasing in the 1930s and early 1940s as a result of the depression

Source: The Statistics of Travancore, Various Editions.

Infant Mortality in Travancore

• One of the best quality, most detailed records of infant mortality for colonial India that exists

Travancore IM 1931-1945 India IM 1992-3

Nagercoil 112.8 Delhi 66

Trivandrum 71.7 West Bengal 75

Quilon 63.4 Karnataka 66

Kottayam 85.4 Kerala 24

Alwaye 89.6 Uttar Pradesh 100

All Travancore 84.2 All India 79

Sources: Travancore, The Statistics of Travancore, Various Editions. India, NFHS.

Regression ResultsNo. Observations: 387 Specification 1 – Year Fixed

EffectsSpecification2 – Year and Division Fixed Effects

Independent variable: Height (mm)Constant -1639.2* -3737.8Scheduled Caste -50.21 *** -54.65***Christian 3.16 5.67Nayar -18.47 -23.86Other Caste -14.09 -18.11Infant Mortality 0.22* 0.118Unskilled Real Wages -5.15 -8.58Semi-Skilled Real Wages -4.81 9.89Skilled Real Wages -0.581 -0.177Year FE YES YESDivision FE NO YES

Excluded caste dummy: Brahmin***= significant at 10% , ** = significant at 5%, * = significant at 10%

Regression Results

• Regional inequality in height between North and South of the state.

• Only Semi-skilled wages approach significance and are of the expected sign.

• Infant mortality is not statistically significant and is not of the expected sign

• The coefficients on wages and infant mortality may well change when the database is completed.

Conclusions and Future Work• Kerala’s comparative success in nutrition has

long historical roots. • Mean height was increasing in Travancore in

the early C20th when it was stagnant elsewhere in India and despite falling real wages

• Going to archives in Kerala in 3 weeks to collect more wages data.

• Plan to construct a more subtle measure of real wages than the grain wages presented here using other price data in the database.

Travancore Height Data

Caste No. Observatons

Brahmin 156Christian 209Nayar 138Scheduled Caste

226

Other Caste 624

Birth Cohort No. Observatons

1910-1914145

1915-1919169

1920-1924219

1925-1929223

1930-1934286

1935-1939293

1940-194514