Abstract: What is the health impact of famines on survivors? We use a population exposed to severe famine conditions during infancy to document two opposing effects. The first: exposure leads to poor health into adulthood, a scarring effect. The second: survivors do not themselves suffer health consequences, a selection effect. Anthropometric evidence on over 21,000 subjects born before, during and after the Great Irish Famine (1845-52), among modern history’s most severe famines, suggests selection is strongest where mortality is highest. Individuals born in heavily-affected areas experienced no measurable stunted growth; scarring was found only where excess mortality was low.
Keywords: famine, fetal origins hypothesis, anthropometrics, economic history, Ireland.
JEL Classification: I15, I32, J11, N33, Q54
Cite this article: Matthias Blum, Christopher L. Colvin, and Eoin McLaughlin, ‘Scarring and selection in the Great Irish Famine’, medRxiv preprint (January 2022), https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.09.07.20189662.
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