Biological Measures of Economic History
这篇综述讨论了经济史学家使用的四种生物指标（死亡率、身高、身体质量指数和骨骼遗骸）的方法和发现，这些指标有助于跨时间和文化比较人类福祉，弥补货币指标在历史数据上的不足。
This review discusses the methodology and some findings underlying four types of biological measures used by economic historians: mortality rates, stature, body mass index, and skeletal remains. Economic historians examine a variety of sources to learn when, why, and where modern industrial societies became rich and healthy. Monetary measures, such as income and wages, are highly desirable but usually unavailable to cover the time periods and countries over which modern societies evolved. Donning interdisciplinary lenses, these historians search archives, libraries, and archaeological sources for scraps of information, often assembled for other purposes, to construct a story of the evolution of humanity’s well-being. Biological measures have the advantage of comparability across time and culture; life expectancy, for example, means about the same today as in ancient Egypt, but the same cannot be said for the purchasing power of income, wages, or wealth.