Life

Baten received his doctorate from Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich

Munich

Munich The city's motto is "" . Before 2006, it was "Weltstadt mit Herz" . Its native name, , is derived from the Old High German Munichen, meaning "by the monks' place". The city's name derives from the monks of the Benedictine order who founded the city; hence the monk depicted on the city's coat...

 with his work about the biological standard of living

Biological standard of living

The Biological Standard of Living indicates how well the human organism itself thrives in its socio-economic and epidemiological environment. It captures the biologically relevant component of welfare, well-being or the quality of life. It emphasizes that the human experience ought not to be...

 in South Germany. Since 2001 he holds the chair of economic history at the Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen.
In 2005 he was invited as a visiting professor at Yale University

Yale University

Yale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...

 (Dept. Political Science) and was visiting professor at Pompeu Fabra University

Pompeu Fabra University

Pompeu Fabra University is a university in Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain. It is widely considered to be one of the best universities in Spain and in Europe, and was ranked 1st in scientific productivity in Spain in 2009. Founded in 1990, it is named after the Catalan philologist Pompeu Fabra...

 of Barcelona

Barcelona

Barcelona is the second largest city in Spain after Madrid, and the capital of Catalonia, with a population of 1,621,537 within its administrative limits on a land area of...

 in 2006/07.
Since 2006 Baten is Secretary General of the International Economic History Association

International Economic History Association

The International Economic History Association serves as an umbrella organization, which has been established in 1960 and unites economic historians from all over the world. Beside national economic history associations, it welcomes as member organizations also societies, which specialize in a...

.

Work

Baten achieved prominence with his works about the long term development of human capital and living standards. In a global project he and his colleagues studied trends of numerical skills over centuries. As an indicator for numeracy, the share of people being able to state their exact age was used, as well as consumption statistics of books. Baten drew the conclusion that early development of education in some countries caused today’s differences between poor and rich, whereas world trade played a rather marginal role.

Jointly with Nikola Koepke, Baten studied the history of health and nutrition in Europe since the ancient world and in joint work with other junior scholars (for example, Alexander Moradi), he explored other world regions such as Africa, the Middle East and Latin America using methods of anthropometric history

Anthropometric history

Anthropometric history is a term coined in 1989 by John Komlos to refer to the study of the history of human height, focusing on explaining secular trends, cycles of various lengths and cross sectional patterns by changes in the socio-economic and epidemiological environment.-Development of the...

.

One fundamental achievement was that the health of historical populations depends on agricultural characteristics. A specialisation of animal husbandry, for example, reduces the catastrophal insufficiency of protein and calcium in preindustrial societies.

External links

• Jörg Baten at the website of Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen.