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