Standing on the shoulders of giants. Paternal life course effects on son’s heights outcomes in the Netherlands 1820-1960

ABSTRACT This article aims to answer the question: what makes you taller than your father? To study this intergenerational growth, conscription heights from the Historical Sample of the Netherlands are used from the period 1820–1960. A growth estimation method on the individual level is introduced to cope with the variance in growth windows in the nineteenth century, especially to estimate growth after conscription. Both the influence of external and household factors are examined. Moreover, the external living conditions of the mother are included in the analyses as well. It was found that the disease environment, proxied by crude death rates, affects heights within a generation and so an improvement in these conditions makes a son taller. What adds to this is that maternal early life conditions play a crucial role in outgrowing a father if these conditions differ from that of the father himself. Furthermore, sibship size was found to have a negative effect on heights. Furthermore, social mobility achieved by the father was associated with a larger height difference with his son. Still, on average, sons did not yet reach the heights of higher socioeconomic peers after paternal upward mobility.