The Antebellum Puzzle refers to the finding, first reported in 1979, that the height of the male U.S. population, although the tallest in the world, declined during the decades preceding the Civil War. The finding was corroborated on the basis of the height of West Point cadets in 1987. The reason was that the nutritional intake of the U.S. population declined at the onset of modern economic growth because productivity in agriculture foodstuffs lagged far behind the productivity in industry bringing about an absolute and relative increase in the price of food, while at the same time an increase in overall agricultural production took place because of the great increases of non-food production (e.g., cotton and tobacco).
