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Transitions that Matter? Czechoslovakia’s Break up and Human Stature

Changes in a population’s average stature are virtuous pointers of wellbeing which are sensitive to improvements in psychosocial environments during childhood. A major structural change that could have altered an environment during childhood is the transition from communist to a liberal democracy, a...

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Autores principales: Costa-Font, Joan, Kossarova, Lucia
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2019
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6950449/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31835829
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph16245050
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author Costa-Font, Joan
Kossarova, Lucia
author_facet Costa-Font, Joan
Kossarova, Lucia
author_sort Costa-Font, Joan
collection PubMed
description Changes in a population’s average stature are virtuous pointers of wellbeing which are sensitive to improvements in psychosocial environments during childhood. A major structural change that could have altered an environment during childhood is the transition from communist to a liberal democracy, and, more specifically, the meltdown of the Soviet bloc provides for a quasi-natural experiment. This paper examines the trends in heights in the Czech Republic and Slovakia before and after the transition and the subsequent break-up of the Czechoslovakian federation. We find that one additional year of exposure to a liberal democracy while growing up is associated with an increasing population stature of 0.28 cm among Slovaks and 0.15 cm among Czechs. We only find changes in stature among men who are more sensitive to environmental stress, especially at the lower end of the current socio-economic status. Results are robust to alternative datasets and measures of democracy.
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spelling pubmed-69504492020-01-16 Transitions that Matter? Czechoslovakia’s Break up and Human Stature Costa-Font, Joan Kossarova, Lucia Int J Environ Res Public Health Article Changes in a population’s average stature are virtuous pointers of wellbeing which are sensitive to improvements in psychosocial environments during childhood. A major structural change that could have altered an environment during childhood is the transition from communist to a liberal democracy, and, more specifically, the meltdown of the Soviet bloc provides for a quasi-natural experiment. This paper examines the trends in heights in the Czech Republic and Slovakia before and after the transition and the subsequent break-up of the Czechoslovakian federation. We find that one additional year of exposure to a liberal democracy while growing up is associated with an increasing population stature of 0.28 cm among Slovaks and 0.15 cm among Czechs. We only find changes in stature among men who are more sensitive to environmental stress, especially at the lower end of the current socio-economic status. Results are robust to alternative datasets and measures of democracy. MDPI 2019-12-11 2019-12 /pmc/articles/PMC6950449/ /pubmed/31835829 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph16245050 Text en © 2019 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Costa-Font, Joan
Kossarova, Lucia
Transitions that Matter? Czechoslovakia’s Break up and Human Stature
title Transitions that Matter? Czechoslovakia’s Break up and Human Stature
title_full Transitions that Matter? Czechoslovakia’s Break up and Human Stature
title_fullStr Transitions that Matter? Czechoslovakia’s Break up and Human Stature
title_full_unstemmed Transitions that Matter? Czechoslovakia’s Break up and Human Stature
title_short Transitions that Matter? Czechoslovakia’s Break up and Human Stature
title_sort transitions that matter? czechoslovakia’s break up and human stature
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6950449/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31835829
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph16245050
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