1. The quote is from Genesis 6:4 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, n.d.: New Testament, p. 7). Floud, Wachter, and Gregory (1990) also make use of this quotation at the beginning of their volume but draw different implications from it. On the methodological importance of analogy and metaphor in the sciences and social sciences, see inter alia, Nelson, Megill, and McCloskey 1987; McCloskey 1994; Mirowski 1987; and the discussion in chapter 2 (''Long-Term Determinants of the Anthropometric Measures, 1901-1979," and appendix) of this volume. [BACK]

2. The relationship between the standard of living and what I call population quality is a thorny one. I distinguish between the standard of living and population quality on practical grounds. In common parlance indicators of potential physical strength and endurance and of intelligence and learning capacity reside within the organs and tissues of the individuals within a population and hence tell us something about the population's average quality. The standard of living is either a more subjective matter involving a psychological sense of self-worth and satisfaction or a matter of goods and services consumed and possessed by individuals within a population and hence external to physical bodies. As I argue in the text of this section and the next section of chapter 1, there is a relationship between Sen's definition of the standard of living, which revolves around capabilities conceived in terms of the physical and psychological capabilities to take advantage of economic and social opportunities, and my definition of population quality in the sense that both of us reject definitions based on per capita consumption of goods and services or on utility. However, my definition is narrower than his since I exclude a host of political and social factors like political freedom which Sen considers important.

Another reason I make a point of distinguishing between population quality and the standard of living defined in terms of per capita consumption is that I feel some scholars mistake the one for the other, or use the former as a proxy for the latter. For instance, in Fogel (1986) and in many of the fine papers in the volume edited by Komlos (1994) there is a tendency to confuse anthropometric measures with the standard of living. As an example, consider the title of Shay 1994. While I do think some aspects of what these scholars define as the standard of living, especially food consumption, are important to determining population quality as I define it, I do not believe that population quality is equivalent to these components of the standard of living defined in consumption terms. Moreover, I favor Sen's definition of the standard of living over that defined in terms of consumption of goods and services because I wish to emphasize the linkage between the standard of living and work capacity.

Steckel (1994a, 1994b) reviews some other proposed indexes that bear a resemblance to what I propose here: for instance, a physical quality of life index advanced by Morris and the UN development index and his own biological standard of living index. However, none of these is identical to population quality. To some extent, of course, it does not matter what we call the underlying variable we are measuring with the anthropometric proxy variables as long as we are clear about what we think statistical analysis is actually telling us. For instance, in this volume I utilize anthropometric measures as proxies for population quality, but persons who prefer to interpret results concerning the determinants of the anthropometric measures in terms of another conceptual framework in which the anthropometric measures are proxies for something else are free to do so. I do attempt, however, to show in Part II that an interpretation in terms of capabilities and work capacity is reasonable. [BACK]

3. The influence of the gene pool on anthropometric measures is one reason that it is difficult to make inferences about the standard of living of slaves in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century America on the basis of comparisons between figures on height and weight for slaves and nonslave populations like Irish immigrants to Boston. Of course, if we adopt Sen's concept of the standard of living, slavery, by constraining human freedom, automatically reduces the standard of living of the enslaved population. [BACK]

4. There is a literature in contemporary Japan known as the Nihonjinron which argues that the Japanese people constitute a racially distinct people. It is sometimes argued by advocates of this viewpoint that the digestive organs of Japanese differ from those of non-Japanese or the Japanese people learn the Japanese language on one side of the brain while other racial groups learn their languages on the other side of the brain, and so forth. Miller (1872) reviews many of these arguments, demonstrating that the experimental evidence adduced in their favor is shaky or nonexistent. He also shows that many of the arguments, such as that concerning language and the brain, are circular. The obvious problem with this is that since many individuals not of Japanese origin, like Koreans living in Japan whose mother tongue is Japanese, learn Japanese, and they either learn the language on the other side of the brain from the Japanese—in which case they are not really learning Japanese as a language—or they learn the language on the same side of the brain as the Japanese—in which case by

definition they are themselves Japanese even though they are not Japanese. It should be obvious from the text that I think the idea of a pure Japanese "race" is not a useful concept and I reject it throughout this book. [BACK]

5. There is a large literature that deals with the potential interactions between the environments phenotypes function in and genetic evolution. One line of argument is sociobiological and posits that maximizing survival of the gene pool may be the basis for altruistic behavior toward one's own children and kin. On this literature, see Goldsmith 1991 and Wallace 1972a, 1972b. [BACK]