Paper long abstract:

Historical data on Africa is often scarce and of limited reliability. Partly for this reason, economists prefer a short view analysis ignoring the important lessons that can be learned from a long term view of the development process. For eluminating what factors proved historically successful in reducing poverty, we first need to document how well-being changed, at the most disaggregated level possible. In this paper, I focus on two important dimensions of the quality of life: nutrition and health. Both dimensions can be quantified by height measurements – using new data and following a methodology which was hitherto not applied in studies of African economic history.

Body stature can serve as a gauge of nutritional status. The physical development of children is enhanced by a healthy environment, including high-quality nutrition in sufficient quantities. Deprivation, in contrast, stunts bodily growth. Because the ‘noise’ of individual genetics cancels when considering populations, population mean height can be taken as a measure of nutritional intake net of claims due to diseases. The anthropometric indicator has significant advantages. Heights measure outcomes, not inputs and they are applicable to the diverse social and economic systems that exist amongst Africans including hunters, pastoralists, subsistence farmers, cash-crop producers, and employees in the modern and informal sector. Kenya represents this diversity of social groups in one country. This and the historical background, particularly that of a settler economy with demonstrably exploitative policies, makes Kenya an extremely interesting case study.

Using height measurements of cohorts born in the 1880s, 1915s, 1960s and 2000s, I map changes in regional inequality over time finding significant spatial and temporal variations. The Central Region (north of Nairobi) underwent a remarkable transformation. The prevalence of chronic malnutrition was extremely widespread in the 1880s, but it decreased considerably by 1980. The neighbouring Kamba region, in contrast, stagnated, whereas the Nyanza and Western Region (in the west) could defend their favourable nutritional status until the 1980s. The mixed experience in Kenya provides interesting insights into the nature of the development process. Firstly, Kenya looked back on a relatively long period of improvements in well-being before it was hit by the devastating economic crisis of the 1980s. Secondly, dynamic and stagnation can be spatially very close. Thirdly, likely factors behind improvements in living standards were commercialisation of agriculture, trade, transfers of successful technologies.