Why did children grow so well at hard times? The ultimate importance of pathogen control during puberty

Peeter Hõrak,Markus Valge

doi:10.1093/emph/eov017

Abstract

Background and objectives: Secular increase in human height and performance occurred in Europe throughout the 20th century despite the temporally worsening access to nutrients during and after World War II. This pattern is paradoxical under the assumption of the major impact of pre- and postnatal growth conditions for determination of adult size and human capital.Methodology: We examined the anthropometric parameters of Estonian girls born between 1938 and 1953, and measured around the age of 17 (n = 1475). This period involved two opposite trends in the economic and epidemiological situation: increasing birth-time economic hardships during the war and particularly in the post-war period, and decreasing infant mortality (a proxy of disease burden) after 1947.Results: Height of girls was negatively affected by the number of siblings and positively by parental socioeconomic position, but these effects were weaker than the secular trend. Leg length (an indicator of pre-pubertal growth conditions) was independent of age and birth date while all other traits, including measures of performance (cranial volume, lung capacity and handgrip strength) showed acceleration. The best predictor of size at age 17 was, in most cases, infant mortality in the year when the girls were aged 11.Conclusions and implications: Reduction of disease burden during pubertal growth can override effects of resource shortage at birth. Our results also support the idea that increasing efficiency of pathogen control can contribute to the secular increase in cognitive abilities, i.e. the Flynn effect, and that epidemiological transition is the main driver of secular increase in human capital.

Highlights

Resource limitation and pathogens are arguably the most important selective forces that affect fitness via survival and fecundity selection [1]
In order to test whether the secular trend in cranial volume was independent of an allometric increase in body dimensions, we examined whether the effect of birth date on head size remains significant in models containing either height, body mass or both as covariates
High childhood mortality in Africa [56] and poor countries elsewhere [4] is often associated with taller adults, which suggests that mortality selection dominates growth stunting, the opposite of what is found in the rest of the world [56]. Such differences in environmental constraints and selection regimes may well lead to regional differences with respect to sensitivity of growth to external exposures. We suggest that such regional differences might explain why, for instance, secular increase in height for Czech children between 1800 and 2001 could be ascribed to increased growth velocities around the period of pubertal growth spurt [19], contrary to what has been reported for the tropics [57]

Summary

Introduction

Resource limitation and pathogens are arguably the most important selective forces that affect fitness via survival and fecundity selection [1]. Secular increase in human height and performance occurred in Europe throughout the 20th century despite the temporally worsening access to nutrients during and after World War II This pattern is paradoxical under the assumption of the major impact of pre- and postnatal growth conditions for determination of adult size and human capital. Methodology: We examined the anthropometric parameters of Estonian girls born between 1938 and 1953, and measured around the age of 17 (n = 1475) This period involved two opposite trends in the economic and epidemiological situation: increasing birth-time economic hardships during the war and in the post-war period, and decreasing infant mortality (a proxy of disease burden) after 1947. Our results support the idea that increasing efficiency of pathogen control can contribute to the secular increase in cognitive abilities, i.e. the Flynn effect, and that epidemiological transition is the main driver of secular increase in human capital

Methods

Discussion

Conclusion