Average Height in Australia (Men & Women)

How tall are Australians?

Australians are among the tallest people on Earth. The site's headline figures come from the NCD Risk Factor Collaboration (NCD-RisC), which estimates that Australians born in 1996 average 179.2 cm (5′10.5″) for men and 165.9 cm (5′5.5″) for women. In the site's table of 200 countries and territories, Australian men rank 18th and Australian women 12th.

The NCD-RisC paper, published in eLife in 2016, singles Australia out: it was the only country outside Europe where men born in 1996 were among the 25 tallest in the world. Every other country in that group was European, led by the Netherlands at 182.5 cm.

Australia also has an unusually good national measurement record. The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) measures height and weight in its health surveys, which makes it possible to compare the international estimate with a local one. The two don't match exactly, and the reasons are worth understanding before quoting either number.

What the NCD-RisC estimate measures

NCD-RisC pooled 1,472 population-based studies with measured height for more than 18.6 million people born between 1896 and 1996. It didn't use self-reported heights, because the bias in what people report varies with age, sex, education and country. The data were organized by birth cohort, everyone born in a particular year, and each cohort's height was estimated at around age 18. The model includes a term that allows a cohort's measured height to change as it ages, since people lose height in later life.

Australian research groups contributed data, and several Australian universities appear among the collaborating members. Estimates for each country are informed first by its own surveys, and by regional and neighboring data where a country's own data are thin. Australia is data-rich, so its estimate depends mainly on Australian measurements.

A century of Australian height

Australians were already tall a century ago, and they kept growing:

Over the century, men gained 10.3 cm and women 10.4 cm, slightly more than the 8 to 9 cm that men and women gained worldwide, according to Our World in Data. Most of it came before the 1976 cohort. Men born in 1996 were just 0.6 cm taller than those born in 1976, and women 1.0 cm taller.

That flattening is part of a pattern across rich English-speaking countries. NCD-RisC reports that height plateaued in English-speaking countries such as the UK for two or three decades, and that the US plateau started earliest of all. Australia's curve flattened later and at a higher level than America's: men born in 1896 were 2.2 cm shorter than American men of the same cohort (171.1 cm in the site data), but those born in 1996 are 2.1 cm taller (177.1 cm).

Evidence from Melbourne schoolchildren

An independent study supports this timeline. In 2000, Danuta Loesch and colleagues published measurements of 1,804 Melbourne school students aged 5 to 17, taken in 1992–93, and compared them with historical data on white Australians stretching back about 100 years. They found a secular increase in adult stature over the century, with the rate ranging from 0.4 to 2.1 cm per decade in males and from 0.01 to 1.6 cm per decade in females. The increase in stature had slowed significantly over the previous two decades, while body weight was still rising quickly, especially among females. The authors linked the period of strongest growth to earlier puberty and to improving socioeconomic conditions.

What the ABS measures

The ABS publishes measured heights from its National Health Survey (NHS) and earlier health surveys. Its numbers describe all adults alive at the time of the survey, not a single birth cohort.

National Health Survey 2022

In the 2022 survey, the average measured height of Australians aged 18 and over was 174.8 cm for men and 161.5 cm for women, with medians of 175 cm and 162 cm. Broken down by age, the averages show the generational pattern clearly:

Two notes from the ABS are important. First, 41.8% of respondents aged 15 and over didn't have their height, weight or both measured in 2022, and the ABS imputed values for them. Second, the ABS randomly adjusts table cells to protect confidentiality, so small inconsistencies between totals and their parts are expected.

Australian Health Survey 2011–12

A decade earlier, the Australian Health Survey reported that the average man aged 18 and over was 175.6 cm tall and weighed 85.9 kg, and the average woman was 161.8 cm and 71.1 kg. Between 1995 and 2011–12, average height rose by only 0.8 cm for men and 0.4 cm for women, while average weight rose by 3.9 kg and 4.1 kg. Men aged 75 and over (169.7 cm) were 8.1 cm shorter than men aged 18 to 24 (177.8 cm), and women showed exactly the same gap: 155.7 cm against 163.8 cm.

The 2011–12 and 2022 surveys used different designs, so the small difference between their national averages shouldn't be read as a real decline.

Why the two sources disagree

The NCD-RisC estimate for the 1996 cohort is 179.2 cm for men and 165.9 cm for women. The ABS figures for the closest comparable group, 18 to 24 year olds in 2022 (born roughly 1998 to 2004), are 177.4 cm and 162.9 cm. That's a gap of 1.8 cm for men and 3.0 cm for women.

Some plausible contributors, each based on what the sources themselves say:

• Different targets. NCD-RisC estimates a single birth year at age 18 using a statistical model that smooths across all survey years; the ABS reports a direct survey average for an age band.
• Imputation. With 41.8% of 2022 respondents not fully measured, part of the ABS figure rests on imputed values.
• Model uncertainty. NCD-RisC reports credible intervals for every estimate. Its validation found median absolute errors of about 0.5 cm against withheld data, but individual estimates can still miss by more.

Neither source is "wrong". For comparing Australia with other countries, the NCD-RisC figure is consistent across all 200 countries. For describing Australians today, including older adults, the ABS figures are the better guide.

Australian women: taller than their peers abroad

Australian women stand out even more than Australian men. They rank 12th in the world in the 1996 cohort, six places above Australian men, and they're taller than women in every other English-speaking country in the site's data. The difference is visible in the century-long series:

A century ago Australian women were 3 cm shorter than American women. By the 1956 cohort they had caught up, and since then American women stopped growing while Australian women added another 2.5 cm. The gap between Australian men and women was 13.4 cm in the 1896 cohort and 13.3 cm in the 1996 cohort, so the sexes gained almost exactly the same amount.

The ABS figures tell a slightly different story for the youngest adults. In 2022, women aged 25 to 34 (163.4 cm) were a little taller on average than women aged 18 to 24 (162.9 cm), while for men the youngest group was tallest. Differences this small are about the size of the relative standard errors the ABS publishes for these estimates, and the Melbourne study had already found that female height gains were slower than male gains and close to zero in some decades. Taken together, the sources suggest that Australian women's height, like men's, has reached a plateau.

Australia compared with its region and peers

Australia is much taller than most of its Asia-Pacific neighbors and close to the English-speaking countries it's usually compared with (NCD-RisC, 1996 birth cohort):

Australian men are about 1.5 cm taller than New Zealanders and 1.7 cm taller than British men, and Australian women outrank women in every English-speaking peer listed. The gap to near neighbors in Southeast Asia and Melanesia is over 15 cm for men.

Australian heights in everyday terms

An average Australian man born in 1996, at 179.2 cm, stands a little under 5′10.5″. Hugh Jackman, listed on this site at 190.5 cm, is about 11 cm above that. For women, Nicole Kidman's listed 180 cm is about 14 cm above the 1996-cohort average of 165.9 cm and nearly 19 cm above the ABS figure for all adult women.

If you're Australian and want to see where you fall, the height percentile calculator compares a height with the national distribution, and the cm to feet page for 180 cm shows that height in feet and inches. You can also compare yourself with a tall Australian in the height comparison tool.

Height, health and the Australian story

Australia was one of 62 countries the NCD-RisC team used to examine height and mortality, chosen because their death registration was more than 80% complete. Across those countries, cohorts that gained more height also showed larger falls in the probability of dying between ages 50 and 70 (correlation coefficients of −0.58 for men and −0.68 for women). The authors present this as evidence that height gains go hand in hand with better population health; it doesn't mean height itself protects any individual.

Our World in Data stresses the same distinction: within a population, most variation in height is genetic, while the change from one generation to the next reflects nutrition and health. Australia's story fits that pattern well. Its people were tall by world standards a century ago, they gained another 10 cm as living conditions improved, and in recent decades their height has stabilized while average weight has kept rising, a shift the ABS and the Melbourne study both recorded.