Agrarian reforms, agrarian crisis and the biological standard of living in Poland, 1844-1892

This paper examines changes in the biological well-being in the Kingdom of Poland on the basis of data concerning the physical height of conscripts drafted into the Russian army between the 1860s and 1913. The rise in the average height began with the cohorts born in the mid-1860s and lasted until the mid-1880s. The height increment was 1.9 cm. In the birth cohorts of 1882-1892 the mean height stagnated as a result of the agrarian crisis. In Galicia the increase in height of conscripts began also with the cohorts born in the 1860s and lasted uninterruptedly until 1890. The persistence of the trend in the 1880s was due to the development of animal husbandry after the closure of the border against imported cattle in 1882 and the more balanced pattern of modernization than in the Kingdom of Poland.