Average Height by Country (Men & Women)

Why average height is worth studying

Average height is one of the most revealing statistics a country has. It's easy to measure, it changes slowly, and it carries a record of how well children were fed and how healthy they were while growing up. Economists and historians call it a measure of the "biological standard of living," a phrase Our World in Data uses for exactly this reason: where income or nutrition data are thin, height often fills the gap.

This hub covers adult height in 200 countries and territories, with a century of change for each, using estimates from the NCD Risk Factor Collaboration (NCD-RisC). Around 100 countries have their own page with a full article; all 200 appear in the tables and the height percentile calculator. This guide explains what the numbers mean, how they were produced, what a century of data shows, where heights have stalled or fallen, and how national surveys compare.

What the numbers mean: birth cohorts and measured heights

Every value on these pages describes a birth cohort: people born in a given year, measured as adults. The latest cohort in the NCD-RisC study was born in 1996 and turned 18 in 2014. Organizing by birth year instead of survey year matters for two reasons. First, it separates real changes in growth from the slight shrinking that comes with old age. Second, it lets you compare generations directly: you can see how tall people born in 1926 were, not just how tall the elderly happen to be today.

The study behind the numbers is large. NCD-RisC's 2016 paper in eLife pooled 1,472 population-based studies with measured heights from more than 18.6 million people born between 1896 and 1996. The authors deliberately excluded self-reported heights because they are subject to systematic bias; people tend to round up. Data were available for 179 of the 200 countries, covering about 97 percent of the world's population. A Bayesian hierarchical model then estimated each country's average, drawing on that country's own surveys and, where data were thin, on neighboring countries and nearby years. National surveys were weighted more heavily than local studies.

Every estimate comes with an uncertainty interval. For Dutch men born in 1996, the estimate is 182.5 cm with a 95 percent interval of 180.6 to 184.5 cm. In practice, that means small differences between neighboring countries in a ranking are often not meaningful.

A century of change: the world grew about 9 cm

The NCD-RisC world estimates, which are weighted by population, show steady growth followed by a plateau:

That's a gain of nearly 9 cm for men and 8.4 cm for women over a century, almost all of it before the 1976 cohort. Our World in Data puts the long view in context: skeletal evidence suggests heights hovered around 170 cm for about two millennia with little sustained improvement, then rose steadily in many countries from the 1800s onward.

Individual countries moved much faster than the world average:

The eLife paper highlights the record gains: South Korean women grew by 20.2 cm and Iranian men by 16.5 cm. South Korea's women went from among the shortest in the world to above the global average in three generations, a change that tracks the country's rapid economic development.

The Dutch, the Americans and the great overtaking

The most famous story in this data is the reversal between the United States and the Netherlands. For people born in 1896, American men averaged 171.1 cm and Dutch men 169.4 cm, so Americans were among the tallest people on Earth. Then the paths split. Dutch heights kept climbing by around 5 cm every 30 years until the 1976 cohort, while US heights rose more slowly and flattened out after the 1950s.

By the 1956 cohort, Dutch men averaged 180.4 cm against 177.2 cm in the US. For the 1996 cohort the gap is 5.4 cm: 182.5 cm against 177.1 cm. Dutch men are now the tallest in the world, and Dutch women are among the tallest, at 168.7 cm. The NCD-RisC paper also notes that US heights plateaued, and the site data show American men born in 1996 very slightly shorter than those born in 1976.

The tallest women in the 1996 cohort are in Latvia, where the average rose from 155.5 cm to 169.8 cm over the century, followed by the Netherlands, Estonia and Czechia, all above 168 cm.

Where heights stalled or fell

Not every country grew. Our World in Data notes that since around 1970, growth stalled in several regions and reversed in others, notably sub-Saharan Africa. In the site's NCD-RisC data, men born in 1996 are shorter than the tallest earlier cohort in a number of countries:

• Rwanda: down 4.4 cm from its peak, to 162.7 cm
• Madagascar: down 4.0 cm, to 161.5 cm
• Uganda: down 3.9 cm, to 165.6 cm
• Egypt: down 3.7 cm, to 166.7 cm
• Niger: down 3.7 cm, to 167.7 cm
• Nigeria: 168.4 cm for men born in 1976, 165.9 cm for those born in 1996

Similar declines appear for women in Benin, Madagascar, Niger, Rwanda, Zambia and Chad. Because height reflects childhood conditions, these reversals point to periods of economic hardship, poor nutrition or high disease burden while those cohorts were growing up. Our World in Data notes that most stunting happens in the first two years of life, and that catch-up growth is possible when conditions improve.

Regional patterns

Averaging the country estimates within each continent (each country counts equally, so these aren't population-weighted) gives a broad picture for the 1996 cohort:

Europe is the clear outlier. Its men are on average 6.5 cm taller than North America's country average and nearly 11 cm taller than Africa's. Within Europe, the tallest populations cluster in the north and the Balkans: Belgium, Estonia, Denmark, Latvia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina all average 180.9 cm or more for men, along with the Netherlands, and Serbia is close behind at 180.6 cm. Our World in Data notes that the gap between the tallest and shortest regions has widened for men over the century, from about 8 cm to 12 cm.

Men, women and the height gap

Men are taller than women in every country in the data, but the gap varies. Our World in Data reports that the global male-to-female height ratio has stayed close to 1.07 for a century, even as both sexes grew. That stability hides country stories. In South Korea, the gap narrowed from 17.6 cm in the 1896 cohort to 12.6 cm in 1996 as women's heights rose faster. In the Philippines, it doubled, from 6.8 cm to 13.6 cm, because men's average rose while women's barely moved.

The gap shows up in everyday life, too. In a UK study of more than 12,000 couples published in PLOS ONE, men averaged 177.9 cm and women 163.8 cm, and the man was taller in 92.5 percent of couples.

Genes, environment and a natural experiment

How much of the difference between countries is genetic? Our World in Data summarizes the evidence this way: within a population, most of the variation between individuals is genetic, but differences between populations reflect both genes and living standards, and changes over time are driven mainly by nutrition and health. A century of growth in the same gene pools, such as the 15 cm gain for South Korean men, can't be explained by genetics.

The Korean peninsula offers a striking comparison. North and South Korea share a common ancestry and, for people born in 1896, had almost identical averages in the NCD-RisC estimates: 160.6 cm for men in the North and 159.8 cm in the South. By the 1996 cohort, South Korean men averaged 174.9 cm and North Korean men 172.0 cm; for women the figures are 162.3 cm and 159.0 cm. The divergence opened only after the peninsula was divided, which points to differences in diet and living conditions rather than genes.

Common misconceptions about height rankings

"Montenegro has the tallest people." This claim circulates widely, often based on small or older surveys. In the NCD-RisC estimates, Montenegrin men born in 1996 average 178.3 cm. That's tall by world standards, but it ranks 24th of 200 countries, below the Netherlands, Belgium, Estonia, Denmark, Latvia, neighboring Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia and Serbia, among others.

"Americans are the tallest." That was close to true for people born in the late 19th century, but US men born in 1996 rank 37th of 200 countries in the NCD-RisC estimates, behind most of northern and central Europe as well as Australia and Canada. US women, at 163.5 cm, rank 43rd.

"Everyone is still getting taller." The world average has been flat since the 1976 cohort, and some countries have gone backward.

"A ranking difference of 0.5 cm means one country is taller." With uncertainty intervals of a few centimeters for many countries, neighbors in a ranking are often statistically indistinguishable.

"Self-reported surveys are good enough." Self-reports tend to run high, which is why NCD-RisC excluded them; many popular lists still mix them in.

National surveys versus NCD-RisC

Many countries run their own health surveys, and their averages won't match NCD-RisC exactly. The United States is a good example. The CDC's National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) measured adults between 2021 and 2023 using a strict stadiometer protocol: shoes off, heels together, head level in the Frankfort plane, with a deep breath before the reading. It reports:

The figures describe different groups. NCD-RisC models one young cohort; NHANES "all adults" includes everyone from 20 to over 80, and the oldest groups are several centimeters shorter. For young adults, the two sources line up closely. When you compare a country's numbers from different sources, check the age group and the survey year before concluding that one is wrong.

How to use the country pages

Each country page shows the current averages for men and women, a century-long trend chart, the country's rank, neighbors and region for comparison, and a long-form article on that country's history, national surveys and practical context. The hub's tables let you sort all 200 countries by men's or women's height, browse by continent, and see which countries gained or lost the most height between the 1896 and 1996 birth cohorts.

To see what a country's average looks like next to you, add yourself and the average man and woman in the height comparison tool. To see where your height ranks within a particular country, use the height percentile calculator, which estimates percentiles from the NCD-RisC averages and gives exact measured percentiles for US adults. For children, the CDC recommends WHO standards under age 2 and CDC charts from age 2, which the site's growth chart and child calculators follow.