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This is illustrated in the following charts which show the year-on-year relative change in average male and female heights by region. Positive values here indicate an increase in average height from one year to the next; zero indicates no change; and negative indicates a decline.
Here we can pull out several key points. Secondly, we see that across all regions, average human heights have experienced significant growth over the past century. The story is largely the same for women, but with the addition that average female heights in North America have stagnated as well.
This seems like an unexpected result. Human height is positively correlated with standards of living ; living standards have been increasing across the world in recent decades, so why would average human heights be stagnating or even falling? This trend is particularly curious for Sub-Saharan Africa, where average height appears to be falling the most while the region has simultaneously achieved progress across many aspects of wellbeing.
Height is partly determined by genetics. Evolution aside, the genes of a population are fixed. As such, it is reasonable to assume that there is an upper limit to average heights, at which nutritional and health factors are optimal.
This scenario could explain the recent stagnation, especially in high income countries across Europe and Central Asia, where living standards are high. A study published in Nature examined the recent stagnation of heights in the Netherlands, the tallest population in the world.
They found similar results: that the year increase in average heights in the Netherlands had came to an end in recent decades.
They concluded that the reason for this is not entirely clear. They suggest that the Dutch may have reached the maximum mean height possible for the population.
But they also hypothesized that recent lifestyle changes — not a genetic upper bound — may be hindering further increases in the average heights of men and women. 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. Please create an employee account to be able to mark statistics as favorites.
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