Average sizes of men and women. The country with the tallest women and men are found in Europe. Men from the Netherlands have the highest average height with The tallest women in the world live in Latvia with a mean height of cm 5 ft 6. Until the second half of the 19th century, the Dutch were actually among the shortest people in Europe. However, due to a change of life quality and a better distribution of wealth, the Dutch became the tallest Europeans by the s. Currently, the shortest men with an average height of cm 5 ft 3 in live in Timor in South-East Asia, whereas women in Guatemala are on average only cm 4 ft Countries like Bolivia and Indonesia are among the poorest in the world and many children are chronically malnourished which leads to a comparable shorter stature in adult age.
Comparing stats from the last century to this, South Korean women and Iran men showed the largest increase in mean height over the last century. The height of Korean women has increased by 7. On the other side of the specter, the average height of the citizens in Sub-Saharan African and South Asian countries has changed very little in the same period. Evidence across many studies indicates that short adult height in low- and middle-income countries is driven by environmental factors , primarily by nutrition during childhood, and adolescence.
It drives also the association of height with wealth and social outcomes. The fact that the average height of the US and other Western populations has plateaued in the past decade suggests that the nutrient environment has almost maximized the genetic potential of height. Improved nutrition in developing countries may have similar benefits in terms of stature. There are fewer historical data for women, and for other regions where focus has largely been on children and where adult data tend to be reported at one point in time or over short periods Subramanian et al.
In this paper, we pooled worldwide population-based data to estimate height in adulthood for men and women born over a whole century throughout the world. The male birth cohort on average measured only Women born in the same year in Guatemala were on average Swedish women, with average adult height of See www. Changes in adult height over the century of analysis varied drastically across countries.
As a result, South Korean women moved from the fifth shortest to the top tertile of tallest women in the world over the course of a century. Men in South Korea also had large gains relative to other countries, by There were also large gains in height in Japan, Greenland, some countries in Southern Europe e. In contrast, there was little gain in height in many countries in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.
The open circle shows the adult height attained by the birth cohort and the filled circle that of the birth cohort; the length of the connecting line represents the change in height over the century of analysis. The pace of growth in height has not been uniform over the past century.
The impressive rise in height in Japan stopped in people born after the early s Figure 6. In South Korea, the flattening began in the cohorts born in the s for men and it may have just begun in women. As a result, South Korean men and women are now taller than their Japanese counterparts. The rise is continuing in other East and Southeast Asian countries like China and Thailand, with Chinese men and women having surpassed the Japanese but not yet as tall as South Koreans.
The rise in adult height also seems to have plateaued in South Asian countries like Bangladesh and India at much lower levels than in East Asia, e. The solid line and shaded area show estimated height at 18 years of age, while the data points show height at the actual age of measurement. The divergence between estimates and data for earlier birth cohorts is because participants from these birth cohorts were generally older when their heights were measured. There were also variations in the time course of height change across high-income western countries, with height increase having plateaued in Northern European countries like Finland and in English-speaking countries like the UK for 2—3 decades Larnkaer et al.
The earliest of these occurred in the USA, which was one of the tallest nations a century ago but has now fallen behind its European counterparts after having had the smallest gain in height of any high-income country Tanner, ; Komlos and Lauderdale, ; Komlos and Baur, ; Sokoloff and Villaflor, In contrast, height is still increasing in some Southern European countries e.
As an exception to the steady gains in most countries, adult height decreased or at best remained the same in many countries in sub-Saharan Africa for cohorts born after the early s, by around 5 cm from its peak in some countries see for example Niger, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, and Uganda in Figure 8.
More recently, the same seems to have happened for men, but not women, in some countries in Central Asia e. Men born in surpass average heights of cm in the Netherlands, Belgium, Estonia, Latvia and Denmark, with Dutch men, at Australia was the only non-European country where men born in were among the 25 tallest in the world.
Women born in are shortest in Guatemala, with an average height of Male and female heights were correlated across countries in as well as in In the birth cohort, the male-female height gap in countries where average height was low was slightly larger than in taller nations.
In other words, at the turn of the 20th century, men seem to have had a relative advantage over women in undernourished compared to better-nourished populations. A century later, the male-female height gap is about the same throughout the height range. Changes in male and female heights over the century of analysis were also correlated, which is in contrast to low correlation between changes in male and female BMIs as reported elsewhere NCD Risk Factor Collaboration, Countries like Japan, Singapore and France had larger-than-median gains in height but little change in BMI, in contrast to places like the USA and Kiribati where height has increased less than the worldwide median while BMI has increased a great deal.
Each point shows one country. BMI change was calculated for mean BMI at 45—49 years of age — an age when diseases associated with excess weight become common but weight loss due to pre-existing disease is still uncommon. BMI data were from a pooled analysis of population-based measurement studies with Data from military conscripts and personnel have allowed reconstructing long-term trends in height in some European countries and the USA, albeit largely for men, and treating it as a 'mirror' to social and environmental conditions that affect nutrition, health and economic prosperity, in each generation and across generations Tanner, ; Fogel, ; Komlos, ; Martins et al.
Our results on the large gains in continental European countries, and that they have overtaken English-speaking countries like the USA, are consistent with these earlier studies although these earlier analyses covered fewer countries in Eastern and Southern Europe, and used some self-reported data with simple adjustments that cannot fully correct for their bias Hatton and Bray, ; Facchini and Gualdi-Russo, ; Baten and Blum, We found that some of the most important changes in height have happened in these under-investigated populations.
In particular, South Korean and Japanese men and women, and Iranian men, have had larger gains than European men, and similar trends are now happening in China and Thailand. These gains may partially account for the fact that women in Japan and South Korea have achieved the first and fourth highest life expectancy in the world see also below.
Prior studies have documented a rise in stunting in children in sub-Saharan Africa which continued to the mids Stevens et al. Our results indicate that such childhood adversity may have carried forward to adulthood and be affecting health in the region.
The early African advantage over Asia may also have been partly due to having a more diverse diet compared to the vegetable and cereal diet in Asia, partly facilitated by lower population density Deaton, ; Moradi, Rising population, coupled with worsening economic status during structural adjustment, may have undermined earlier dietary advantage Stevens et al. The main strengths of our study are its novel scope of estimating a century of trends in adult height for all countries in the world and for both sexes.
Our population-based results complement the individual-level studies on the genetic and environmental determinants of within-population variation in height, and will help develop and test hypotheses about the determinants of adult height, and its health consequences.
We achieved this by using a large number of population-based data sources from all regions of the world. We put particular emphasis on data quality and used only population-based data that had measured height, which avoids bias in self-reported height. Data were analysed according to a common protocol before being pooled, and characteristics and quality of data sources were verified through repeated checks by Collaborating Group members. Finally, we pooled data using a statistical model that could characterize non-linear trends and that used all available data while giving more weight to national data than to subnational and community surveys.
Although we have gathered an unprecedentedly comprehensive database of human height and growth, and have applied a statistical model that maximally utilizes the information in these sources, data in some countries were rather limited or were from community or sub-national studies. This is reflected in larger uncertainty of the estimated height in these countries. To overcome this, surveillance of growth, which has focused largely on children, should also systematically monitor adolescents and adults given the increasingly abundant evidence on their effects on adult health and human capital.
Even measured height data can be subject to measurement error depending on how closely study protocols are followed. Finally, we did not have separate data on leg and trunk lengths, which may differ in their determinants, especially in relation to age at menarche and pre- vs. Greater height in adulthood is both beneficially cardiovascular and respiratory diseases and harmfully colorectal, postmenopausal breast and ovarian cancers, and possibly pancreatic, prostate and premenopausal breast cancers associated with several diseases, independently of its inverse correlation with BMI Paajanen et al.
If the associations in epidemiological studies are causal, which is supported by the more recent evidence from Mendelian randomisation studies Green et al. Further, short maternal stature increases the risk of small-for-gestational-age and preterm births, both risk factors for neonatal mortality, and of pregnancy complications Kozuki et al. Therefore, improvements vs.
Probability of death was calculated using a cohort life table. Mortality data were available for to The birth cohort is the first cohort whose mortality experience at 50—54 years of age was seen in the data, and the birth cohort the last cohort whose mortality experience at 65—69 years of age was seen in the data.
The dotted line shows the linear association. Our study also shows the potential for using height in early adulthood as an indicator that integrates across different dimensions of sustainable human development. Adult height signifies not only foetal and early childhood nutrition, which was included in the Millennium Development Goals, but also that of adolescents Lancet, Further, adult height is a link between these early-life experiences and NCDs, longevity, education and earnings.
It can easily be measured in health surveys and can be used to investigate differences across countries and trends over time, as done in our work, as well as within-country inequalities. Therefore, height in early adulthood, which varies substantially across countries and over time, provides a measurable indicator for sustainable development, with links to health and longevity, nutrition, education and economic productivity.
We estimated trends in mean height for adults born from to i. Countries were organized into 20 regions, mostly based on a combination of geography and national income Supplementary file 1. Our study had two steps, described below.
Other studies have assessed the apparent stagnation, or slowed growth, in other high-income regions. One investigated not only the stagnation of heights in the United States, but also why they have fallen behind many countries across Europe.
In the 19th century, North Americans were the tallest in the world , but fell behind over the course of the 20th century. In Sub-Saharan Africa, the pattern is even more puzzling. Remarkably, the average male and female heights of the region have been falling since , despite improvements in health and nutrition. Some researchers argue that this is due to selection: the least healthy children — whose growth is stunted due to malnutrition — do not survive to adulthood, while the survivors are healthier and taller.
When child mortality rates decrease, stunted children survive to adulthood, thus lowering the average adult height. This explanation could apply to low income regions, where socioeconomic factors are improving but still relatively weak. Improvements in environmental factors such as nutrition and health could result in further increases in average heights.
However, the factors that influence height have an upper limit: nutrient intake, for example, likely has limits above which benefits stop.
But for the richest and tallest countries in the world today, heights may have reached their limit. There are large differences in human height across the world. These differences are not just geographical: human heights have changed significantly over our history , with increases in every country over the past century. Height is determined by a combination of genetic and environmental factors. How our height might reflect our environment — today and in the past — has been a key focus area for research.
Here we see that people are taller in countries with a higher standard of living. Nutrition is the one of the strongest determinants of human height. Humans convert the chemical energy stored in the macronutrient constituents of food into energy. Dietary energy intake from food must balance energy expenditure due to metabolic functions and physical activity, plus extra energy costs such as growth during childhood.
Humans can adapt to an enduring low dietary energy intake, or undernourishment, by reducing the rate of growth, which leads to stunting , and restricts adult height.
Insufficient dietary energy intakes across a population therefore result in a low average adult height. Protein is an essential macronutrient in a healthy diet, and is necessary for a wide range of biological processes, including growth. It is made up of basic building blocks called amino acids. Some amino acids — known as the nutritionally essential amino acids — cannot be made in the body, and so must come from the diet.
Diets must provide adequate quantities of the full range of amino acids for human growth and metabolism. The table shows the protein quality of different foods. Animal source food usually contains higher quality protein than plant source food. They are also a good source of micronutrients, such as iron and zinc, which are necessary for metabolism.
A study by Headey of dietary patterns in lower-income countries suggests there is a strong association between the consumption of animal sourced foods and height. For instance, animal proteins comprise 9. But even larger height disparities begin to arise at high levels of animal protein intake. In high-income countries, where animal protein intake is high, Grasgruber found that the strongest predictor of male height is the ratio of high-quality animal proteins — from milk products, red meat, and fish — to low-quality plant proteins — from wheat, rice and other cereals.
Appropriate mixtures of plant source proteins — such as cereals plus legumes or oil seeds — are capable of providing the essential amino acids and micronutrients necessary for growth. However, diets in low-income countries are often dependent on a single staple food source. By contrast, cereals and grains constitute less than a quarter of dietary energy in the United States. As such, low-income countries are unlikely to exhibit enough dietary diversity.
Animal proteins form an increasingly large part of our diets as income increases. Since nutrition plays a key role in determining height, there is an obvious relationship between income and height.
Health — particularly in childhood — also influences human height. Disease during childhood can restrict growth because it reduces the availability of nutrients and raises metabolic requirements.
Children fighting disease have higher nutritional requirements during a period when nutrients are less available. As such, high incidences of disease should lead to shorter average heights. Grasgruber found that the socioeconomic factor most strongly correlated with male height is child mortality. This relationship is illustrated in the scatter plot, with child mortality rate on the y-axis and mean male height on the x-axis.
A low child mortality rate suggests low incidences of disease, as well as sufficient nourishment, and hence predicts a taller average height. For example, 0. The relationship between health and height is reinforced by the significant impact of healthcare expenditure. We see this reflected in Arab states where health expenditure is much lower than their income level would predict.
For example, compare Oman and the Netherlands: the average male height of the Dutch is cm — 13 centimeters taller than the average in Oman. Both countries have high levels of income per capita. Both child mortality and healthcare expenditure impact life expectancy: we would therefore expect them to be strong determinants of the relationship between standard of living and average height.
Total fertility rate the number of children per woman also interacts with these determinants, making it the second strongest socioeconomic correlate of height. The role of fertility in high-income countries is marginal since fertility rates are already very low. But it gains statistical significance at lower incomes, where fertility rates are relatively high.
In families where there are a large number of children, expenditure and food availability for each child is often lower. We might therefore expect that in countries where the fertility rate is high, health expenditure and nutritional quality per child is low, while incidence of disease is high.
In a pioneering study of Japanese immigrants to Hawaii published in , Harry Shapiro found there to be a significant difference between the heights of Hawaiian-born Japanese and the Japanese immigrant population. The underlying idea here is that migration from poor countries to rich ones may lead to dramatic changes between generations. In a similar study, Marcus Goldstein found there to be differences in the heights and other characteristics of the children of Mexican immigrants and their parents, as well as with native born Mexican children.
Height is partly determined by the interaction of different genes. Recent breakthroughs in sequencing the human genome have enabled researchers to identify variants of genes that are associated with height. These variants have a large number of combinations; these can lead to a wide range of potential heights. Specific combinations of these variants are much more common to some populations than others.
This could help to explain disparities in average heights around the world. Certain haplogroups — groups of variant clusters that are inherited from one common ancestor — have observable associations with height.
For example, one haplogroup J1-M is most commonly observed in populations that spread from the Zagros mountains in Iran to the Arabian peninsula, particularly Yemen. By contrast, one haplogroup I-M is most concentrated in Germanic-speaking Europe, and the Western Balkans, particularly Herzegovina.
These regions are characterised by tallness, which strongly suggests a correlation between this haplogroup and height. Is height determined by genetics or environment? But since , that growth stopped. Go ahead, have that third cup of coffee. You just might live longer, new research suggests.
Sleep and Alzheimer's: Study supports 'sweet spot' to negative impacts. Dutch people born in may have been the tallest in the country's history, with the average heights of 6 feet This marked a significant growth spurt for the 20th century — in , for example, Dutch heights averaged at just 5.
When considering what could have caused the recent drop, the CBS researchers suggested a connection to increased immigration of new, shorter population groups and the children born from these groups in the Netherlands.
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