A century of trends in adult human height

TLDR

Height is linked to longer life, higher education, and greater earnings. The study pooled 1,472 population studies of 18.6 million participants to estimate mean adult height by birth cohort across 200 countries. Over the past century, adult height rose most in South Korean women and Iranian men, while many sub‑Saharan African and South Asian populations saw little change; the tallest men were born in the Netherlands (average >182.5 cm) and the shortest women in Guatemala (≈140 cm), with the height gap between extremes remaining similar for women and widening for men.

Abstract

Being taller is associated with enhanced longevity, and higher education and earnings. We reanalysed 1472 population-based studies, with measurement of height on more than 18.6 million participants to estimate mean height for people born between 1896 and 1996 in 200 countries. The largest gain in adult height over the past century has occurred in South Korean women and Iranian men, who became 20.2 cm (95% credible interval 17.5-22.7) and 16.5 cm (13.3- 19.7) taller, respectively. In contrast, there was little change in adult height in some sub-Saharan African countries and in South Asia over the century of analysis. The tallest people over these 100 years are men born in the Netherlands in the last quarter of 20th century, whose average heights surpassed 182.5 cm, and the shortest were women born in Guatemala in 1896 (140.3 cm; 135.8- 144.8). The height differential between the tallest and shortest populations was 19-20 cm a century ago, and has remained the same for women and increased for men a century later despite substantial changes in the ranking of countries.