Average Height in Algeria (Men & Women)

Algeria's average height

Algerian men born in 1996 average 170.1 cm (5′7″) and Algerian women 159.1 cm (5′2½″), according to the NCD Risk Factor Collaboration (NCD-RisC) estimates used on every country page of this site. Algeria ranks 111th of 200 countries for men and 97th for women, a little above the world middle for women and a little below it for men.

Algeria's height history follows an arc seen in several countries of North Africa and the Middle East: rapid growth through the middle of the 20th century, then a stall, and for men a modest decline. This guide explains where the numbers come from, traces that century of change, looks at what Algeria's national STEPS health surveys measured, follows the sharp fall in childhood stunting, and compares Algeria with its neighbors.

How the estimates are made

The Algerian figures come from NCD-RisC's 2016 eLife analysis, which estimated average height at age 18 for each birth year from 1896 to 1996 and set aside self-reported heights because people tend to overstate them. In Algeria's series, men gained almost 12 cm between the 1896 cohort (160.4 cm) and the 1976 cohort (172.3 cm) before slipping to 170.1 cm for those born in 1996.

Each number describes a birth cohort. The 170.1 cm headline is the estimate for Algerian men born in 1996, who reached adulthood around 2014, not for every adult man in Algeria today. The study notes that only 72 countries had any data for people born in 1920 or earlier, so the earliest Algerian values rely heavily on the model and should be read as broad estimates.

A century of change

The early gains were large. Men born in 1926 were 6.7 cm taller than men born in 1896, and men born in 1956 another 4.5 cm taller. Women gained 4.0 cm and then 3.2 cm over the same steps. Because men's height rose faster, the gap between the sexes widened from 8.5 cm in the 1896 cohort to 12.5 cm in the 1956 cohort.

After that, growth slowed sharply. Men born in 1976 were only 0.7 cm taller than those born in 1956, and women 0.5 cm taller. Then men's height fell: the 1996 cohort is 2.2 cm shorter than the 1976 cohort. Women's average slipped just 0.5 cm, back to where it was for the 1956 cohort.

Over the full century, men gained 9.7 cm and women 7.2 cm.

One of the fastest early surges

Algeria's early gains stand out globally. Among all 200 countries in the NCD-RisC data, the median gain for men between the 1896 and 1926 cohorts was 3.7 cm. Algerian men gained 6.7 cm, the second-largest increase in the world over that period, behind only Iran (7.3 cm). Several other countries of North Africa and the Middle East are also near the top of that list, including Egypt (6.4 cm), Yemen and Jordan (6.2 cm each), Turkey (6.0 cm), Syria (5.8 cm) and Morocco (5.7 cm).

Women's gains in the same period were smaller, 4.0 cm, equal to the global median for women. That difference is why the sex gap widened so much in the first half of the century.

Because so few countries have height data for people born before 1920, these early estimates carry wide uncertainty, and the clustering of North African and Middle Eastern countries near the top of the list may partly reflect how the model handles a region with sparse early data. But the broad direction, strong gains in the first half of the century followed by a stall, appears in the more recent, better-measured cohorts too.

A regional pattern

The NCD-RisC paper describes this pattern across part of the region. In some countries of North Africa and the Middle East, such as Egypt and Yemen, men's height declined or stagnated in recent cohorts while women's did not. Algeria fits that description, though its decline is smaller than Yemen's. The same paper notes that Iran was an exception, with height still rising for both sexes.

The sources reviewed for this page don't identify a cause for Algeria's stall. Our World in Data explains that adult height largely reflects nutrition and health in childhood, especially in the first two years of life, so the plateau suggests that conditions for growth stopped improving, on average, for children born from the late 1950s to the 1990s. The stunting data below are consistent with that.

Algeria's STEPS surveys

Algeria has run two rounds of the World Health Organization's STEPS survey of noncommunicable disease risk factors. Both measured height and weight in their second step, alongside blood pressure, but the published fact sheets report body mass index and other risk factors rather than average height.

The 2003 survey

According to its fact sheet, the first Algeria STEPS survey ran from September to October 2003, covered adults aged 25 to 64 and used a stratified cluster sample; 4,102 adults took part. The WHO's microdata repository lists the study as covering Sétif and Mostaganem, two provinces, so it may not represent the whole country despite the fact sheet's wording.

The fact sheet reports a mean BMI of 24.0 for men and 26.1 for women. A Wikipedia table compiling national height surveys lists a WHO STEPS report for Algeria with measured averages of 169.7 cm for men and 158.5 cm for women aged 25 to 64, based on 1,626 men and 2,491 women. Algerians aged 25 to 64 at the time were born roughly between 1940 and 1980. The women's figure is within about 1 cm of the NCD-RisC estimates for the 1956 and 1976 cohorts, and the men's figure about 2 cm below them, so the survey broadly supports the model's picture while hinting that men's estimates may be slightly high. Because they come from a secondary compilation, this page treats them as a cross-check rather than a headline.

The 2016-17 survey

The second round ran from November 14, 2016 to May 26, 2017, covering adults aged 18 to 69 with a three-stage cluster sample designed to represent Algeria nationally. A total of 6,989 adults took part, with a response rate of 93.8%.

Comparing the two rounds, mean BMI was higher in 2016-17 for both men (25.3 against 24.0) and women (27.5 against 26.1), and the share of adults who were overweight rose from 46.7% to 55.6%. The age ranges and coverage differ between rounds, so the comparison is approximate. Over roughly the same years, childhood stunting fell sharply, as the next section shows, so Algeria's adults were getting heavier while its children were becoming less likely to be undersized.

These BMI figures depend on accurate height measurement. Because BMI divides weight by height squared, a small error in height changes the result noticeably, which is one reason STEPS surveys measure height rather than asking for it.

Childhood stunting

Child stunting, low height for age, is the earliest signal of how tall a generation will become. World Bank figures for Algeria show a clear pattern:

Stunting was higher in the 1990s and early 2000s, at around 23% to 24%, than in 1987. Children who were under 5 in the 1990s were born in the late 1980s and the 1990s, the same generation as the NCD-RisC 1996 cohort, so this rise lines up with the dip in men's adult height for that cohort. Estimates from different surveys aren't always strictly comparable, but the timing is consistent.

Since the early 2000s, stunting has fallen steadily, to 9.8% in 2019, well under half its earlier level. If that improvement holds, Algerians born in the 2000s and 2010s should grow up taller than the 1996 cohort. This site's data stop with people born in 1996, so that change isn't visible here yet.

Algeria and its neighbors

Among its North African neighbors, Algeria sits close to Morocco, within 0.3 cm for men, while Algerian women are 1.3 cm taller than Moroccan women. Tunisian and Libyan men are 3.9 cm and 3.4 cm taller than Algerian men. To the south, men in Mali average 1.0 cm more and men in Niger 2.4 cm less. Egypt, which NCD-RisC named alongside Yemen for falling male height, is 3.4 cm shorter for men.

Across the Mediterranean, French men born in 1996 average 179.7 cm, 9.6 cm taller than Algerian men, and French women 5.8 cm taller than Algerian women.

How the neighbors' trends compare

Algeria's decline is not shared by all its neighbors. In the NCD-RisC series, Tunisian men born in 1996 are taller than any earlier Tunisian cohort, at 174.0 cm. Moroccan men fell 0.9 cm and Libyan men 0.6 cm between the 1976 and 1996 cohorts, while Egyptian men fell 3.7 cm. Algeria's 2.2 cm fall for men puts it in the middle of that range, well short of Yemen's 4.2 cm drop over the same two cohorts. Small differences of a centimeter or two between neighboring countries should be read with caution, since the estimates for countries with limited data carry uncertainty.

Practical context

An average Algerian man born in 1996 is about 5′7″, close to the 170 cm page, and an average Algerian woman about 5′2½″. Algerian men born in 1976 are, on average, slightly taller than those born in 1996, an unusual pattern that reverses the familiar idea that each generation is taller than the last.

In family terms, the NCD-RisC series suggests that an Algerian man born in 1996 is likely to be about the same height as his grandfather born in the 1950s, 170.1 cm against 171.6 cm, and a little shorter than his father born in the 1970s. For women, the three generations are almost identical, within half a centimeter. That is very different from countries such as Spain or South Korea, where grandchildren tower over their grandparents. It also means that for Algeria, a single national average describes adults of many ages reasonably well, unlike countries where averages changed rapidly across recent generations.

To see how your height compares with Algerian men or women born in 1996, use the height percentile calculator. For all 200 countries and the method behind the numbers, see the average height hub.