Affiliations 

  • 1 Research School of Management, ANU College of Business and Economics, The Australian National University, 26 Kingsley Street, Acton, ACT 2601, Australia. Electronic address: pierre.vandereng@anu.edu.au
  • 2 Department of Economics, Konkuk University, 120 Neungdongro, Gwangjin-gu, Seoul 05029, South Korea. Electronic address: ksohn@konkuk.ac.kr
Econ Hum Biol, 2019 08;34:216-224.
PMID: 30551996 DOI: 10.1016/j.ehb.2018.11.004

Abstract

This article analyses long-term changes in the mean age at menarche (MAM) as a biological indicator of changes in the standard of living in Indonesia. It finds that MAM was about 15.5 for birth cohorts in the late-19th century, decreasing to 14.5 by the 1930s, at which level it stagnated until the gradual decrease resumed since the early 1960s to around 12.5 in the mid-2000s. The article considers that long-term improvements in nutrition, educational attainment and health care explain these trends. An international comparison of long-term changes finds that MAM in Indonesia was much lower than in Korea and China until respectively 1970 and 1990, but comparable to Japan until 1950 and to Malaysia until 1930. The article presents reasons why these differences are unlikely to be related to dissimilarities in climate and ethnicity, and concludes that they are indicative of relative standards of living.

* Title and MeSH Headings from MEDLINE®/PubMed®, a database of the U.S. National Library of Medicine.