A Three-Decade History of the Antebellum Puzzle: Explaining the Shrinking of the U.S. Population at the Onset of Modern Economic Growth

Introduction THE “ANTEBELLUM PUZZLE” refers to the finding, first reported in 1979, that the height of the male U.S. population, although the tallest in the world, declined during the decades preceding the Civil War.1 This was quite an anomaly insofar as the U.S. economy was growing robustly in this period and the physical stature of the population was not expected to decline during prosperous times. In reflecting upon this finding, Richard Steckel wrote some years later that the shrinking of the population in a growing economy “challenged firm beliefs that the quality of life was improving unambiguously after 1830 . . .”2 The explanation of this anomaly turned out to be stubbornly challenging, took many twists, turns, and detours, and no less