Short and long-term impacts of famines. The case of the siege of Paris, 1870-1871

From September 1870 to May 1871, the siege of Paris, first by the Prussian army then by 'legalist' French troops, resulted in a harsh famine: Parisians were forced to eat rats and even the elephant of the zoo. We study the impact of this shock on both child mortality and the height stature of survivors, with a specific focus on the selection effects linked to mortality as well as to fertility and migration. To this aim, we collect original data on 20 year-old military conscripts born in one of the poorest district of Paris between 1855 and 1875; conscripts born in the poorest district of Lyon, France's second largest city, are used as a comparison group. The analysis of height stature evolution across birth cohorts reveals a rather unusual pattern: a large drop in height of 2 centimeters is observed for cohorts who were 7 to 9 year-old by the time of the siege, whereas lower age children seem unaffected. Using data from the 1866, 1872 and 1876 population censuses, we examine whether selection effects can account for this specific timing, and conclude preliminarily it is not the case. We tentatively argue that early-age children were protected from the famine at the expense of their older brothers or sisters who could not catch up.