Americans shrinking: Straightgoods.com
 
Date: Wed, 9 Jan 2008 10:01:50 -0600 (CST)

from: http://www.straightgoods.ca/ViewFeature8.cfm?REF=6
Americans are shrinking

Height appears to be a useful measure of the well-being of a nation's
citizens.

Dateline: Sunday, January 06, 2008

by Linda McQuaig

Many adjectives come to mind when thinking of how to describe Americans.
But "short" probably isn't one of them.

We're used to the notion of the United States as the world's dominant power
a land of untold resources, wealth and consumption. And one reflection of
this abundance is the fact that for most of the past 2= centuries,
Americans have been literally the tallest people on the planet. Feeding off
the abundant wild game and rich agriculture of their vast new land,
colonial Americans measured a full three inches taller than Europeans.

Not so any more. Compared to Europeans, Americans have effectively shrunk.
Indeed, among all advanced industrial nations, Americans are now at the
bottom end of the height scale.

And, no, it's not the influx of short Hispanics. The height pattern is the
same for Americans even when the sample is limited to non-Hispanic,
native-born Americans.

It seems to be a reflection of something more basic. According to an
influential paper in Social Science Quarterly last June by economic
historians John Komlos and Benjamin Lauderdale, "height is indicative of
how well the human organism thrives in its socioeconomic environment."

The relative shrinking of Americans on the world scene is perhaps then an
indicator of something Americans are doing badly not in Iraq, but right at
home. And that something should be of more than passing interest to
Canadians as we continue, consciously and unconsciously, to shape our
economic and social systems with the US in mind.

Actually, Canada has traditionally been a blend of the US and European
approaches. But in the last couple of decades, as we have focused
increasingly on cutting taxes and have adopted the attitude that
individuals must make it on their own in society, we've veered more closely
to the US model.

We tend to view the low-tax, low-spending US model as simply the norm in
the era of globalization. But in fact it is only the US norm.

Europeans, particularly northern Europeans, have traditionally done things
differently imposing much higher taxes and delivering much more generous
social programs that provide a striking array of benefits to every member
of society. Contrary to our impressions here in the West that globalization
has fundamentally redesigned the world, the Europeans have stuck with their
high-tax, high-spending model in the globalized era.

Which is why the "shrinking" of Americans relative to Europeans is so
intriguing....

whole article at: http://www.straightgoods.ca/ViewFeature8.cfm?REF=6

Penney Kome, author and journalist
http://penneykome.ca
Editor, Straight Goods, http://straightgoods.com