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Male height and wellbeing in nineteenth century New Zealand: an analysis of the Boer War contingents

We report on the heights and physical characteristics of New Zealand soldiers who served in the Second Boer War. Adult heights are widely used as evidence of the standard of living. The adult NZ-born soldiers had a mean height of over 68 in., which is tall for the period and consistent with NZ having a high standard of living at the turn of the twentieth century. To explore the implications of using self-reported ages, we match soldiers to their birth records to establish their true age. We document a tendency for young soldiers to over-state their age. When we use self-reported ages, the youngest adult cohort are a statistically significant 0.35 in. shorter than the base cohort. When we use true ages, they are a statistically insignificant 0.18 in. shorter. This suggests that greater care is needed in the use and interpretation of historical enlistment data for estimating adult heights.