The anthropometric history of school boys and girls and its historical analysis of socio-economic factors in modern rural Japan

2019 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 16K03775
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Section: 一般
• Research Field: Economic history
• Research Institution: Hitotsubashi University (2017-2019); Osaka University (2016)
• Principal Investigator: TOMOBE Kenichi 一橋大学, 大学院経済学研究科, 教授 (00227646)
• Project Period (FY): 2016-04-01 – 2020-03-31
• Keywords: 経済発展 / 栄養 / 体格 / 世帯 / 農家副業

Outline of Final Research Achievements

The changes in living standards of schoolchildren indicated by these analyses of height velocity have greater import for socio-economic history when considered as part of the long-term process of demographic improvement in Japan since the middle of the nineteenth-century.Indeed, the data suggest a reassessment of the economic and social recession of Japan's interwar period, and a reconsideration of whether the description of the age as deeply recessionary makes sense in light of such anthropometric evidence as height growth. Just as described in the research, detailed data on schoolchildren’s heights in a rural part of southern Nagano prefecture in the 1920s and 1930s shed new light on the important role of rural industrialization in the improvement of child health and anthropometrics.

Free Research Field

日本経済史

Academic Significance and Societal Importance of the Research Achievements

本研究の目的は、最近の身体研究（身長や栄養など）や人口学研究（乳児死亡）の知見に基づき人的資本の成長の痕跡を身長データなどから再構成し、それと経済成長の軌跡との比較を通じて、人的資本の物質的根幹である人間の生理学的な成長とマクロ経済的な成長を結び付ける可能性を、近代日本の農村を舞台に比較史の展望を含めて探った。
具体的には、これまでの経済史研究は工業化期の農村を舞台に無制限的労働供給や都市経済との二重構造論などの分析課題を提示してきたが、農村での労働力が生理学的・身体的にどのように成長してきたのかという基本的かつ信頼のおける身体データの構築はほとんどなかったが、本研究ではそれを行った。