Average Height in Argentina (Men & Women)

Average height in Argentina

Argentine men born in 1996 average 174.6 cm (5′8½″) and Argentine women 159.2 cm (5′2½″), according to the NCD Risk Factor Collaboration (NCD-RisC) estimates used throughout this site. Argentina ranks 55th of 200 countries for men and 94th for women.

That split is the most distinctive thing about Argentine height. The men are the tallest in the South American group compared on this page, taller than Uruguayans, Brazilians and Chileans. The women are not: Uruguayan and Brazilian women are taller, and Chilean and Paraguayan women are about the same. The gap between Argentine men and women, 15.4 cm, is unusually wide. This guide looks at where the numbers come from, how they changed over a century, what Argentina's own surveys measure, and how the country compares with its neighbors.

The source of the figures

Argentina's averages are cohort estimates from NCD-RisC's 2016 eLife study, which left out self-reported heights because people tend to overstate them. The Argentine series rises without a break for men, from 162.3 cm in the 1896 cohort to 174.6 cm in the 1996 cohort, while women's growth flattened after 1976, at 159.6 cm, and dipped slightly to 159.2 cm.

Each value describes a birth cohort, not the whole adult population at a single moment. The 174.6 cm figure refers to men born in 1996. Argentines born decades earlier are shorter on average, partly because conditions in childhood were different and partly because people lose a little height as they age.

The model is strongest where data are plentiful. NCD-RisC notes that only 72 countries had data for cohorts born in 1920 or earlier, so early estimates rely more on the statistical model and carry wider uncertainty.

A century of change

Argentine men gained 12.3 cm over the century and women 8.6 cm. For the first half of the period, both sexes grew at a similar pace: about 4.5 to 4.8 cm per 30-year step for men and 3.5 to 4.6 cm for women. The paths then diverged. Between 1956 and 1976, men gained 1.8 cm and women only 0.9 cm. Between 1976 and 1996, men gained another 1.2 cm while women's average slipped by 0.4 cm.

A 0.4 cm change is small, and within the uncertainty of a model like this one. But the combination of continued male gains and flat female height is what has stretched the sex gap from 11.7 cm in the 1896 cohort to 15.4 cm in the 1996 cohort. Our World in Data notes that such gaps can change a great deal over time, citing South Korea, where the male-female gap shrank from about 18 cm to 13 cm, and the Philippines, where it doubled from 7 cm to 14 cm. Argentina's widening gap is a milder version of the Philippine pattern.

The NCD-RisC paper notes that height was still rising in many Latin American countries for the most recent cohorts. For Argentine men that holds, at a slower pace. For Argentine women, the most recent estimates suggest a plateau.

Early 20th-century ups and downs

Argentina at the start of the 20th century was a major exporter of food, and historians have asked whether that abundance translated into tall, well-nourished people. A 2004 study by historian Ricardo Salvatore in Explorations in Economic History examined this question for Argentines of the period 1900 to 1934. Its title, "Stature decline and recovery in a food-rich export economy," summarizes the finding: even in a country exporting large amounts of food, average stature fell for a time before recovering.

That result fits a broader point from the height research. Our World in Data explains that average height reflects not just how much food a country produces but whether children actually get enough nutritious food and are protected from disease, especially in the first two years of life. National food abundance doesn't guarantee that every child is well fed and healthy.

The NCD-RisC series, with its 30-year steps, is too coarse to show a short dip like this. It records only that men born in 1926 were 4.8 cm taller than men born in 1896.

What Argentina's own surveys measure

Argentina's main source on adult health risks is the National Risk Factor Survey (Encuesta Nacional de Factores de Riesgo, ENFR), run by the national statistics institute INDEC together with the health ministry. Since its first edition in 2005, it has surveyed households in localities of 5,000 people or more across the country, with a sample designed to represent the adult population aged 18 and over at both national and provincial level.

The fourth edition, in 2018, was the first to add objective physical and biochemical measurements, following the World Health Organization's STEPS design. In its second step, interviewers measured blood pressure, weight, waist circumference and height, using a stadiometer for height, in a subsample of households. The first step remained the self-reported questionnaire, kept comparable with earlier editions, and the third step measured fasting blood glucose and total cholesterol from a finger-prick sample. Participants gave signed consent before being weighed and measured.

This design means Argentina now has two kinds of height and weight data from the same survey: what people say about themselves, as in every edition since 2005, and what interviewers measured in 2018. That makes the 2018 edition a useful baseline for future comparisons, and a potential check on the NCD-RisC estimates once average heights from it are analyzed and published.

The published results use those measurements mainly to calculate body mass index. With measured height and weight, 66.1% of adults had excess weight (overweight or obesity), a figure 7.5 percentage points higher in men than in women, and ranging from 37.8% among 18- to 24-year-olds to 79.7% among people 65 and older. Measured overweight alone was 33.7%, higher among men (38.7%) than women (29.1%). The report does not publish average height for men and women, so the NCD-RisC estimates remain the main source for comparing Argentine height with other countries.

Measuring height properly matters for these indicators. Our World in Data and NCD-RisC both stress that self-reported height is biased upward, which makes self-reported body mass index too low. Moving from self-reports to measured height, as the 2018 ENFR did, gives a more accurate picture.

Child growth

Argentina has relatively low levels of childhood stunting for the region. World Bank figures put the share of children under 5 who are too short for their age at 7.1% in 1994, 7.2% in 2005 and 8.7% in 2018. A 1996 estimate of 16.9% stands far outside that range; values from different surveys are not always comparable, so the 1994, 2005 and 2018 figures give the clearer picture of a low and fairly stable rate.

Low stunting doesn't mean every child grows to their potential, but it does mean that the large catch-up gains seen in countries with widespread childhood undernutrition are less likely in Argentina. That's consistent with the slowing growth in the NCD-RisC series.

Measuring the gap between men and women

One way to compare sex differences across countries is to divide men's average height by women's. For Argentina's 1996 cohort, the ratio is about 1.097: men are close to 10% taller than women. For Brazil the ratio is about 1.079, for Chile about 1.078, for Paraguay about 1.081 and for Uruguay about 1.070. Among these neighbors, Argentina has the largest relative gap.

The ratio has also grown within Argentina. For the 1896 cohort it was about 1.078, the same as Chile's today. It rose to about 1.081 for the 1956 cohort, 1.086 for 1976 and 1.097 for 1996. Almost all of that increase came in the last two cohort steps, when men's height kept climbing and women's stalled.

The sources reviewed for this page do not explain why Argentine women's height leveled off while men's continued to rise, and NCD-RisC does not single out Argentina in its discussion. The pattern is worth watching as newer measured data, such as those from the 2018 ENFR, are analyzed.

Argentina and its neighbors

Argentine men are 1.0 cm taller than Brazilian men, 1.2 cm taller than Uruguayan men and 2.8 cm taller than Chilean men. Argentine women, by contrast, are 2.9 cm shorter than Uruguayan women and 1.7 cm shorter than Brazilian women. For two neighboring countries with men of almost identical height, a women's gap of nearly 3 cm is striking.

Bolivia, to the north, is much shorter for both sexes, by 7.8 cm for men and 5.3 cm for women.

Southern Europe makes an instructive comparison. In the NCD-RisC series, Italian men born in 1996 average 177.8 cm and Spanish men 176.6 cm, both taller than Argentine men. The difference is larger for women: Italian women average 164.6 cm and Spanish women 163.4 cm, 5.4 cm and 4.2 cm above Argentine women. Since the 1896 cohorts, Spanish men gained 14.3 cm and Argentine men 12.3 cm, so men in Spain overtook those in Argentina during the century; Argentine men born in 1896 were the same height as Spanish men born that year, 162.3 cm.

Famous Argentines and the average

Argentina's two most famous footballers are both well below the national average for men. Lionel Messi, born in 1987, is listed on this site at 169 cm, 5.6 cm below the average for Argentine men born in 1996. Diego Maradona, born in 1960, is listed at 165 cm, almost 7 cm below the 171.6 cm average for Argentine men born in 1956. Their careers are a reminder that national averages describe populations, not what any individual can achieve.

What the averages mean in practice

An average Argentine man born in 1996 stands about 5′8½″, close to the 5′9″ page on this site, and an average Argentine woman about 5′2½″. Older Argentines are shorter: men born in 1956 averaged 171.6 cm and women 158.7 cm.

The ranking gap between men and women is worth keeping in mind. A 175 cm Argentine man is close to average at home, while a 165 cm Argentine woman is about 6 cm above the female average, a bigger relative difference. To see where your own height falls among Argentine men or women born in 1996, use the height percentile calculator.