Posted on 07/25/2016 8:18:08 PM PDT by Gamecock
Dutch men and Latvian women are the planet's tallest people but Iranian men and South Korean women have grown the fastest in the last century, according to the largest ever study of height around the world.
Americans, once among the world's tallest people, have dropped from having men and women at 3rd and 4th in the global height rankings a 100 years earlier, to placing 37th and 42nd respectively in 2014.
The research, led by scientists at Imperial College London and published in the journal eLife, also found some nations have stopped growing over the past 30 to 40 years, despite having spurts at the start of the century studied.
The United States was one of the first wealthy countries to plateau, followed by others including Britain, Finland, and Japan. Meanwhile, people in Spain and Italy and many countries in Latin America and East Asia are still gaining height.
In contrast, some nations in sub-Saharan Africa, North Africa and the Middle East have seen average heights decline over the past three to four decades.
Human height is strongly influenced by nutrition and environmental factors, although genetic factors can also play a role in individuals. Children and teens who are better nourished and live in better environments tend to be taller.
Research suggests a mother's health and nutrition during pregnancy may also play a role in how tall her children grow.
Height also has lifelong consequences. Some studies have found that taller people tend to live longer, get a better education and earn more. But being tall may also increase some health risks, with studies linking height to a higher risk of developing ovarian and prostate cancers.
"This study gives us a picture of the health of nations over the past century," said Majid Ezzati, an Imperial professor of public health. He said the findings underlined the need "to address children and adolescents' environment and nutrition on a global scale."
The 800-strong research team, which worked with the World Health Organization, used data from various sources including military conscription figures, health and nutrition population surveys and epidemiological studies.
The scientists use these to generate height information for 18-year-olds in 1914 through to 18-year-olds in 2014.
They found that Iranian men have gained an average of 16.5 centimetres (cm) in height, and South Korean women 20.2 cm.
The height of men and women in Britain has increased by around 11 cm over the past century, while the height of U.S. men and women has risen by 6 cm and 5 cm. Chinese men and women have gained around 11 cm and 10 cm.
The study also found that:
*Dutch men are the tallest, with an average height of 182.5 cm. Latvian women are the tallest, with an average height of 170 cm.
Men from East Timor were the smallest in the world in 2014, with an average height of 160 cm. Women from Guatemala were the smallest in 2014, with an average height of 149 cm.
The difference between the tallest and shortest countries in 2014 was about 23 cm for men - an increase of 4 cm on the height gap in 1914. The height difference between the tallest and shortest countries for women has remained the same across the century, at about 20 cm.
The height difference between men and women has on average remained largely unchanged over 100 years - the average height gap was about 11 cm in 1914 and 12 cm in 2014.
Australian men in 2014 were the only non-European nationality in the top 25 tallest in the world. The nations with the tallest men in 2014 (1914 ranking in brackets): 1. Netherlands (12) 2. Belgium (33) 3. Estonia (4) 4. Latvia (13) 5. Denmark (9) 6. Bosnia and Herzegovina (19) 7. Croatia (22) 8. Serbia (30) 9. Iceland (6) 10. Czech Republic (24) The nations with the tallest women in 2014 (1914 ranking in brackets): 1. Latvia (28) 2. Netherlands (38) 3. Estonia (16) 4. Czech Republic (69) 5. Serbia (93) 6. Slovakia (26) 7. Denmark (11) 8. Lithuania (41) 9. Belarus (42) 10. Ukraine (43)
yea those dutch must be on stretching machines. Why are they so tall?
Most Latvians are devout.
Didn’t the author think having millions of illegal short central Americans floodinf the country would effect the data?
On my trips to the Netherlands I have always been struck by how tall the women are. And the Latvians are taller?
Ballerinas. Why don’t they just hire taller women?
[[Americans, once among the world’s tallest people, have dropped from having men and women at 3rd and 4th in the global height rankings a 100 years earlier, to placing 37th and 42nd respectively in 2014. ]]
Mexican are usually pretty short , tons of immigrants from their is certain to lower the average height
I work with a Korean who is between 7’5 and 7’6
“On my trips to the Netherlands I have always been struck by how tall the women are.”
Ditto. And not just tall, but powerfully built as well, with legs like pilings.
Lots of pickled foods and lots of fatty fish. Nutrition.
I am 1/2 Dutch. Mother came from Haarlem. I am not short but not tall. 6 ft is averageish.
When you cross a Frenchman with a Hollander you get jabba the hut. They end up smart as hell but ugly as hell too in most cases. (Glad my mother chose a non French descendant as my farther, sorry her sister did not...)
Well, damm. Wish I’d inherited that gene.
Frenchman + Greek= Freak ?
To keep their heads above water in case the dikes fail.
It’s the heavy Scandinavian/Germanic bloodlines especially in the other Baltic states the Vikings spread out to.
I say this being a 6’-8” tall 3rd generation American from Sweden. And yes, we settled in Chisago Lakes, MN lol...
With Lithuanians not too far behind. But the Dutch do tower, especially some of their women.
Teutonic stock here, over six feet. Wife’s from a little Swedish town in Kansas, Lindsborg. Her grandfather was a giant.
When I would go to our local Mexican restaurants, I felt like Treebeard. It was like visiting Hobbiton in the Shire.
All these little guys running around, a little over 5 feet tall and about as wide.
Can’t handle the food now and I’m pretty sure they’re illegals.
'The immediate point was clear: America was a good place to live in the eighteenth century. Game was abundant, land free for the clearing, settlement sparse enough to prevent epidemics. On Komlos’s graph, even the runaway slaves are five feet eight, and white colonists are five feet nine—a full three inches taller than the average European of the time. “So this is the eighteenth century,” Komlos said, slapping the files. “This is not problematic. It shows that Americans are well nourished. Terrific.” He reached into a cardboard folder and pulled out another series of graphs. “What is problematic is what comes next.”
Around the time of the Civil War, Americans’ heights predictably decreased: Union soldiers dropped from sixty-eight to sixty-seven inches in the mid-eighteen-hundreds, and similar patterns held for West Point cadets, Amherst students, and free blacks in Maryland and Virginia. By the end of the nineteenth century, however, the country seemed set to regain its eminence. The economy was expanding at a dramatic rate, and public-hygiene campaigns were sweeping the cities clean at last: for the first time in American history, urbanites began to outgrow farmers.
Then something strange happened. While heights in Europe continued to climb, Komlos said, “the U.S. just went flat.” In the First World War, the average American soldier was still two inches taller than the average German. But sometime around 1955 the situation began to reverse. The Germans and other Europeans went on to grow an extra two centimetres a decade, and some Asian populations several times more, yet Americans haven’t grown taller in fifty years. By now, even the Japanese—once the shortest industrialized people on earth—have nearly caught up with us, and Northern Europeans are three inches taller and rising.
The average American man is only five feet nine and a half—less than an inch taller than the average soldier during the Revolutionary War. Women, meanwhile, seem to be getting smaller. According to the National Center for Health Statistics—which conducts periodic surveys of as many as thirty-five thousand Americans—women born in the late nineteen-fifties and early nineteen-sixties average just under five feet five. Those born a decade later are a third of an inch shorter.'
lol...my thoughts, as well.
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