Robert Fogel facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Robert Fogel
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| Born | July 1, 1926 New York City, New York, U.S.
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| Died | June 11, 2013 (aged 86) Oak Lawn, Illinois, U.S.
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| Nationality | American |
| Institution | Johns Hopkins University University of Rochester University of Chicago Harvard University |
| Field | Economic history Cliometrics |
| School or tradition |
Chicago School |
| Alma mater | Stuyvesant High School Cornell University Columbia University Johns Hopkins University |
| Doctoral advisor |
Simon Kuznets |
| Academic advisors |
Evsey Domar Abba Lerner Fritz Machlup |
| Awards | Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences (1993) Bancroft Prize (1975) |
| Information at IDEAS / RePEc | |
Robert William Fogel (July 1, 1926 – June 11, 2013) was an American economic historian and scientist. He won the 1993 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences along with Douglass North.
Fogel was known for using new methods in economic history. This approach, called cliometrics, uses math and statistics to study historical events. He taught at the University of Chicago and led the Center for Population Economics.
Contents
Life and career
Robert Fogel was born in New York City. His parents were immigrants from Ukraine. When he was young, he loved listening to his older brother and his friends discuss big social and economic problems. These talks were often about the Great Depression, a time when many people struggled financially.
He finished Stuyvesant High School in 1944. He enjoyed literature and history and wanted to be a scientist. But because of the tough economy in the 1940s, he became interested in economics instead. He studied at Cornell University, focusing on history with a minor in economics.
After college in 1948, he worked for the Communist Party for eight years. However, he later decided that communism was not based on scientific ideas. He then went to Columbia University, where he earned a master's degree in economics in 1960. He received his PhD from Johns Hopkins University in 1963.
Fogel started teaching at the University of Rochester in 1960. In 1964, he moved to the University of Chicago. During this time, he wrote some of his most important books, including Time on the Cross. He also helped many students who became important economic historians.
In 1975, he moved to Harvard University. Later, in 1981, he returned to the University of Chicago. There, he led the new Center for Population Economics.
Fogel studied many different areas, not just economic history. He also looked at population changes, health, family life, and nutrition. He combined ideas from these different fields to explain big historical events. For example, he studied why death rates dropped so much from the 1700s to the 1900s. His work helped bring economics and history closer together.
Fogel was recognized for his work by being elected to important groups. These included the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1972 and the National Academy of Sciences in 1973.
In 1949, Fogel married Enid Cassandra Morgan and they had two children. He passed away on June 11, 2013, at the age of 86.
Contributions to economic history
Cliometrics and the impact of railroads
Robert Fogel's first major study using cliometrics was about railroads. His 1964 book, Railroads and American Economic Growth, looked at how much railroads helped the U.S. economy grow in the 1800s.
Before Fogel, many historians believed railroads were absolutely necessary for America's growth. Fogel used data and calculations to challenge this idea. He compared the U.S. economy in 1890 with railroads to a made-up economy without them. He found that while railroads were helpful, other ways of transport, like canals, could have done much of the same work. He concluded that railroads were not as vital as people thought. This idea made cliometrics a well-known, though sometimes debated, way of studying history.
Slavery and Time on the Cross
Fogel's most famous and debated book was Time on the Cross (1974). He wrote it with Stanley Engerman. This two-volume book used data to study American slavery.
Fogel and Engerman argued that slavery was profitable for slave owners. They said that plantations were run like businesses to make the most money. They also suggested that, because of how they were organized, Southern slave farms were very productive. This meant that slavery in the American South was not likely to end on its own because it was so profitable for the owners. This idea was different from what many earlier historians believed.
A part of the book also looked at how slave owners treated enslaved people. Fogel and Engerman suggested that because slave owners saw their slaves as part of a business, there were some limits to how badly they were treated. They claimed that enslaved people in the American South might have lived better than some factory workers in the North. This part of the book caused a lot of discussion. Fogel himself was against slavery for moral reasons. He just wanted to show that, from an economic point of view, slavery was not unprofitable or inefficient, as some historians had argued.
Without Consent or Contract: The Rise and Fall of American Slavery
In 1989, Fogel published Without Consent or Contract: The Rise and Fall of American Slavery. He wrote this book partly to respond to the discussions around Time on the Cross. In this new book, he clearly spoke out against slavery. He mentioned the high death rates for babies born to enslaved women and the cruel ways enslaved people were treated.
This book focused more on the social side of slavery, rather than just the economic side. He showed how incredibly hard and dangerous the work of an enslaved person was. He also explained how enslaved people created their own culture as a way to resist slavery. Fogel's main point was to show how a system that was economically strong was eventually ended. He explained how a small group of religious reformers led the fight against slavery. Their efforts grew into a powerful political movement that eventually led to slavery being abolished.
The Fourth Great Awakening
In 2000, Fogel wrote The Fourth Great Awakening and the Future of Egalitarianism. In this book, he argued that America has been moving towards more equality over time. He believed this was largely due to the influence of religion, especially evangelicalism. He thought that since religious movements helped end slavery, they would continue to help America grow morally. Fogel described four "Great Awakenings," which he saw as cycles where new technologies created moral problems, and religious revivals helped solve them.
Later work: The Technophysio Evolution
Robert Fogel also studied how technology and human health changed together. He called this "technophysio evolution." This idea looks at how fast technological changes and improvements in human bodies work together.
He used height as a way to measure health and well-being. Fogel noticed that people's health, body size, and life expectancy improved a lot over 200 years. He explored this idea in books like The Escape from Hunger and Premature Death, 1700–2100. His work showed that having more and better food was a key reason why fewer people died from diseases.
The Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences
In 1993, Robert Fogel and Douglass North shared the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. They received the award for "renewing research in economic history by using economic theory and quantitative methods." This means they used economic ideas and math to explain how economies and institutions change over time. In his Nobel speech, Fogel talked about his work on nutrition and how it affects economic growth.
Writings
- The Union Pacific Railroad: A Case in Premature Enterprise, 1960.
- Railroads and American Economic Growth: Essays in Econometric History, 1964.
- Time on the Cross: The Economics of American Negro Slavery, 2 volumes, 1974. (co-written with Stanley Engerman)
- Which Road to the Past?, 1983.
- Without Consent or Contract: The Rise and Fall of American Slavery, 2 volumes, 1989, ISBN: 9780393312195.
- Economic Growth, Population Theory and Physiology: The Bearings of Long-Term Processes on the Making of Economic Policy, 1994.
- The Slavery Debates, 1952–1990: A Retrospective . Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2003. 106 pp. ISBN: 0-8071-2881-3.
- The Fourth Great Awakening and the Future of Egalitarianism Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000.
- The Escape from Hunger and Premature Death, 1700–2100: Europe, America, and the Third World. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004. 189pp. ISBN: 0-521-80878-2.
- The Changing Body: Health, Nutrition, and Human Development in the Western World since 1700 (co-written with Roderick Floud, Bernard Harris, and Sok Chul Hong), New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011, ISBN: 978-0-521-87975-0
- Explaining Long-Term Trends in Health and Longevity, 2012.
- Political Arithmetic: Simon Kuznets and the Empirical Tradition in Economics (co-written with Enid M. Fogel, Mark Guglielmo, and Nathaniel Grotte), Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013, ISBN: 978-0-226-25661-0
See also
- List of economists
- Economics and Human Biology
- List of Nobel Laureates affiliated with the University of Rochester
Images for kids
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Robert Fogel, a Nobel Prize winner.
