Analysis of periodic fluctuations of the height of Swedish soldiers in 18th and 19th centuries

This paper investigates the periodicity of the adult height of Swedish soldiers of the 18th and 19th centuries using spectral analysis. The height data are left truncated due to the enforcement of minimum height requirement. Hence, we use a truncated regression model using maximum likelihood estimation. We isolate the various frequency components, assess their importance, and perform sensitivity analysis by means of fitting several alternative models.