Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century Social Feminism and Women’s Suffrage: A Female–Male Net Nutrition Comparison using Differences- in-decompositions

When other measures for economic welfare are scarce or unreliable, the body mass index (BMI) is a biological measure that reflects current net nutrition. This study uses a difference-in-decompositions framework to analyse how women’s BMIs varied with the advent of early twentieth century social feminism. Late nineteenth and early twentieth century US economic development improved the relative status of women relative to both men before and after the transition to social feminism. Twentieth century women’s BMIs were higher than nineteenth century women relative to men with the rise of social feminism. The primary source of female–male across-group variation was height and nativity, indicating that there was net nutritional progress for women relative to men associated with changing cumulative net nutrition. The primary source of female–male within-group variation was nativity and socioeconomic status, indicating that there was net nutritional progress relative to women born before the transition for women born after the rise of social feminism association with socioeconomic status. JEL Codes: C1, C4, D1, I1, N3