The Estonian antebellum paradox: a venture into the comparative anthropometric history of the Baltic countries in the early twentieth century

Abstract

ABSTRACT In this study, we examine the mismatch between the anthropometric and the economic measures of human wellbeing, a fact that has gone unnoticed in the international research on anthropometric history: by 1914, Estonian males were among the tallest in the world despite the country’s economic underdevelopment. We explain the anthropometric overperformance of Estonia considering the early start of the first demographic transition in relation to the special features of the agrarian reforms in the Baltic provinces. Estonian boys did grow taller than their peers in Lithuania, Finland, and even in the much richer Western countries, because their parents had smaller families.