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Eric Schneider @ericbschneider.com · 11/03/2026

8/ Now compare to early-20th-century Jamaica. A Rockefeller Foundation hookworm campaign combined: • treatment • improved latrines • intensive hygiene education Campaign workers even brought microscopes into villages so people could see hookworm parasites.

Rockefeller Foundation doctors showing people hookworm larvae under a microscope in Texas in the early 20th century. Unfortunately, no pictures were readily available for Jamaica.

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Eric Schneider @ericbschneider.com · 11/03/2026

5/ Why? Because building sanitation infrastructure doesn’t necessarily reduce children’s exposure to all faecal pathogens. Exposure pathways also depend on: • hygiene behaviour • infant feeding practices • environmental contamination (e.g. horse manure)

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Eric Schneider @ericbschneider.com · 11/03/2026

3/ Recent large trials (e.g. WASH Benefits, SHINE) found limited impacts on child linear growth despite major investments in sanitation infrastructure. Our historical data suggest this puzzle isn’t new. We see similar patterns in the past.

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Eric Schneider @ericbschneider.com · 11/03/2026

1/ Why do many WASH interventions have limited effects on child stunting? Our historical data suggest something surprising: Sanitation infrastructure alone often wasn’t enough, even in the past. New BMJ Global Health paper 👇 doi.org/10.1136/bmjg...

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Eric Schneider @ericbschneider.com · 23/02/2026

There was strong regional variation: • Lower early stunting in Scandinavia and some settler economies • Higher rates in parts of Western Europe • Exceptionally high levels in Japan and Korea But the long-run trend almost everywhere was downward. 7)

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Eric Schneider @ericbschneider.com · 23/02/2026

The historical picture is striking: In the 19th and early 20th centuries, stunting was widespread — even in countries that are high-income today. Large shares of children in Europe, North America, and East Asia were stunted by today’s standards. 6)

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Eric Schneider @ericbschneider.com · 23/02/2026

In our new paper (BMJ Global Health), we systematically collected 923 historical growth studies covering 122 countries from 1814–2016. By harmonising height-by-age data, we reconstruct stunting patterns over two centuries. Link: doi.org/10.1136/bmjg... 5)

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Eric Schneider @ericbschneider.com · 23/02/2026

Today, stunting is a core global health indicator. Globally, rates fell from roughly 47% in the mid-1980s to about 22% today. That’s major progress — but still hundreds of millions of children affected. 3)

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Eric Schneider @ericbschneider.com · 23/02/2026

What is child stunting — and how has it changed over the last 200 years? Stunting means being too short for one’s age due to chronic undernutrition and disease in early life. It’s one of the clearest markers of cumulative deprivation in childhood. 1)

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Eric Schneider @ericbschneider.com · 13/05/2025

Why the such different CFRs? In endemic settings like Sweden, smallpox was a childhood disease and adults very rarely contracted smallpox. But in Iceland, the epidemic struck a population where both adults and children were susceptible. This raised the CFR dramatically. 3/6

Graph showing that where smallpox was endemic, more than 90% of smallpox deaths occurred to children under age 10. However, where epidemic, smallpox deaths could affect adults.

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Eric Schneider @ericbschneider.com · 13/05/2025

📜 NEW WORKING PAPER 📜 What was the true case fatality rate (CFR) of smallpox? My new paper with Romola Davenport (Cambridge) revisits this question using 18th-century data from Sweden and Iceland—and challenges the long-held belief that smallpox CFRs were 20–30%. 🧵👇 1/6

Picture of the title and abstract of the paper.

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Eric Schneider @ericbschneider.com · 12/12/2024

However, this North-South dichotomy may underemphasise the variation in the health transition within the Global South. For instance, mortality and child stunting decline in the Caribbean began far earlier than in countries with similar levels of income in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia.

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Eric Schneider @ericbschneider.com · 12/12/2024

CFP: Workshop on Health Transitions in the Global South CFP Deadline 3 February 2025 Workshop 9-10 June 2025 at LSE Organised by myself and Neil Cummins Sponsored by the LSE Historical Economic Demography Group

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Eric Schneider @ericbschneider.com · 19/11/2024

Always fun to be able to include a beautiful painting that captures the essence of what one is studying. I've always loved Monet's paintings of London.

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Eric Schneider @ericbschneider.com · 19/11/2024

I've been at the Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna in Pisa today presenting new research. Thanks to Giuliana Freschi, Giacamo Gabbuti and Alessandro Nuvolari for inviting me. I use daily fog events in turn-of-the-century London to measure the short- and long-run health costs of pollution for children.

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Eric Schneider @ericbschneider.com · 19/09/2024

Vaccination, introduced in 1802, changed the landscape. As smallpox prevalence dropped, fewer people contracted it as children. In addition, the immunity granted by vaccination waned with age, so by 1820, some pregnant women were susceptible to smallpox.

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Eric Schneider @ericbschneider.com · 19/10/2023

Child stunting has been declining since 1980, but earlier trends were unknown. With many co-authors, I reconstructed historical trends for 123 countries. Child stunting was a common experience for past populations with some countries like Japan having very high stunting rates.

Graph of child stunting rates in 25 countries from the late nineteenth century to the present.

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Eric Schneider @ericbschneider.com · 20/09/2023

Just getting started on here, but here's a VoxEU column about child stunting (a form of malnutrition) that summarises a longer review paper about the determinants of child stunting in long run and global perspective. One of the key figures is below. cepr.org/voxeu/column...

Graph showing historical trends in stunting rates in 25 countries since the late nineteenth century.

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