Kumaniecki i Kubacki. Rzecz o ewolucji nierówności społecznych w świetle wysokości ciała w Polsce XX w.

We examine height inequality among conscripts from Kraków born in 1904–1906, finding statistically significant differences between mean statures of white and blue-collar workers. Among the white collar-workers, a statistically significant difference existed between clerical workers and professionals. A similar hierarchy could be found in Christian and Jewish populations. Moreover, peasants living in Galicia were significantly shorter than persons born in the countryside who then migrated to Kraków. It seems, therefore, that migration was selective with regard to stature. We have compared our results with data concerning Polish conscripts born after 1945. We have found that height inequality was much more pronounced in the 1920s than after the Second World War. In the 1920s the difference in height between peasants and professionals living in Kraków equalled one standard deviation (6.8 cm). In the 1946 birth cohort the difference between peasants and city professionals fell to less than one standard deviation (4.9 cm) and remained more or less stable from then on. The trend towards taller stature was more pronounced among the blue-collars than among the professionals. It was caused by wartime losses of Poland’s social elites and by the post-war state-induced upward social mobility, which reached its height in the 1940s and 1950s. We have also explored the intergenerational patterns of social mobility in Kraków in the 1920s. It turns out that sons of blue-collar workers who advanced to white-collar strata were significantly taller than those who remained in their original social strata. On the other hand, children of white collars and professionals who lost their fathers’ social position and moved into the ranks of blue-collars were shorter than those who remained in the higher strata of society. The biological mechanism that favours taller persons in attaining better educational results and consequently higher social positions did not cause rising height inequality. It proved too weak to outweigh the rise in the standard of living of the population at large and the demand for highly qualified personnel generated by modernisation.