Average Height in Austria (Men & Women)

Austria's average height

Austria is a tall country by world standards but sits in the middle of the European pack, behind most of its neighbors. In the NCD Risk Factor Collaboration (NCD-RisC) estimates for the 1996 birth cohort, Austrian men average 177.4 cm (5′10″) and Austrian women 164.6 cm (5′5″). Men rank 32nd of 200 countries and women 31st.

What makes Austria interesting is the direction of travel. A century ago, Austrian women were among the tallest in the world and Austrian men ranked inside the top 25. Since then, other countries have overtaken Austria, and the most recent Austrian cohorts are slightly shorter than those born in the 1970s.

How the estimates are made

The figures come from NCD-RisC's 2016 analysis in eLife, which combined 1,472 population-based studies with measured height for more than 18.6 million adults and excluded self-reports because of their upward bias. A Bayesian model estimated the average height each birth cohort reached at 18, from the 1896 cohort to the 1996 cohort. The 1996 numbers therefore describe young Austrians who turned 18 around 2014, not the average for all Austrian adults.

A century of change

Austrian men gained 9.4 cm over the century and women 7.0 cm. Most of that came early: men gained 8.5 cm between the 1896 and 1956 cohorts, and women 6.6 cm. In the 1926 cohort, Austrian men ranked 11th in the world and women 8th.

After that, gains slowed sharply, then reversed slightly. Height peaked with the 1976 cohort at 177.9 cm for men and 165.3 cm for women; the 1996 cohort is 0.5 cm shorter for men and 0.7 cm shorter for women. Because neighbors such as Germany and Czechia kept growing longer, Austria slid down the rankings from the 1950s cohorts onward.

Austria's conscript records: 1.7 million young men

Austria has compulsory military service, and its conscription examinations cover, in the words of one study, the total male population of each year's 18-year-old cohort. Researchers from the Medical University of Vienna, the University of Vienna and the Austrian Ministry of Defence have used these records to build one of the largest height datasets in Europe.

How measurements are taken

A 2021 study by Yang, Juan and Waldhoer in Wiener Klinische Wochenschrift describes the procedure. Data come from routine medical examinations at six conscription stations covering all nine provinces, and are stored centrally by the Ministry of Defence. Trained technicians measure height with a standard anthropometer, with conscripts in underwear and without shoes, and weigh them on calibrated scales to the nearest 100 grams. The authors describe the records as representing the total male population of each year's 18-year-old cohort. Their own focus was weight: mean BMI rose from 22.7 to 24.3 and obesity from 1.6% to 8.2% between 1983 and 2017.

Height trend and the speed of growing up

In a 2022 paper in the American Journal of Human Biology, Kirchengast and colleagues used records for 1,205,112 conscripts aged 18 to 19 born between 1951 and 2002, and 853,645 conscripts aged 17 to 18 born between 1961 and 2002. Their findings:

• Mean height of 18-year-old conscripts increased by 4.3 cm between the 1951 and 2002 birth cohorts.
• Among 17-year-olds born between 1961 and 2002, mean height increased by 2.2 cm.
• The increase has slowed since the 1970s.
• The height difference between 17- and 18-year-olds widened from about 0.1 cm in 1961 to 0.3 cm around 1970, then narrowed back to 0.1 cm, which suggests that young men were reaching their final height earlier.

The authors concluded that the height trend slowed at the end of the 20th century while the developmental tempo, the speed at which young people mature, kept increasing.

Height and education

Waldhör and colleagues used the same dataset of 1,734,569 conscripts born from 1961 to 2002 to look at education. Over the 42 years, the share of conscripts at the lowest educational level fell dramatically, from 37.5% to 1.7%. Every educational group got taller, but heights did not converge. Young men at the lowest level of education remained shorter, and their height gap to the highest level actually widened. Their 2023 paper in Annals of Human Biology concluded that educational and social advancement was associated with higher population heights, while the least educated were being left behind.

Austria's regions and Vienna's dip

A third paper, published in Economics and Human Biology in 2024, examined the nine provinces. Mean height rose across the 1961–2002 cohorts overall, but regions that were shorter in the early 1960s gained the most. Vienna was the exception that stood out: its 1961–1963 cohorts were the tallest in Austria, yet its mean height declined until the 1984 birth cohort before rising again from the 1988 cohorts. The authors pointed to economic factors, urban stress and a possible urban penalty as explanations.

Austrian women: from 6th in the world to 31st

There are no conscript records for Austrian women, so the NCD-RisC series is the main guide to their height. It tells a striking story. Austrian women born in 1896 averaged 157.6 cm, 6th in the world and only 2.7 cm behind Swedish women, the tallest at the time. They gained 3.7 cm in the next thirty years and another 2.9 cm by the 1956 cohort, but only 1.1 cm between the 1956 and 1976 cohorts, and then lost 0.7 cm.

The result is one of the narrowest century-long gains for women in Central Europe: 7.0 cm, against 15.7 cm in Czechia and 9.9 cm in Germany. It also changed the gap between the sexes. In the 1896 cohort, Austrian men were only 10.4 cm taller than Austrian women, an unusually small difference. By the 1996 cohort the gap had grown to 12.8 cm, close to the global figure of about 12 cm that Our World in Data reports. Austrian women did not get shorter over the century; they simply gained less than Austrian men and much less than women in neighboring countries.

Growing wider rather than taller

While height gains among Austrian conscripts have slowed, weight has kept rising. In the study by Yang and colleagues, covering about 1.5 million young men examined between 1983 and 2017, mean BMI increased from 22.7 to 24.3 and the share of conscripts with obesity rose from 1.6% to 8.2%. The authors also found that higher education appeared to be associated with lower obesity, particularly among non-smokers. Read together with the height-by-education study, which used the same conscription records, the two papers suggest that less-educated young Austrian men tend to be both shorter and more likely to be obese than their better-educated peers.

Falling behind in childhood

The 2020 NCD-RisC study of school-aged children and adolescents in The Lancet, which estimated height and BMI from 1985 to 2019 in 200 countries, gives a hint about where Austria's relative decline happens. It named boys in Austria (along with Barbados) as an example of children who started at age 5 with a height as healthy as or better than the global median, but who became progressively less healthy compared with their peers in other countries as they grew older, "by not growing as tall". In other words, Austrian boys are not short as young children; the gap opens during later childhood and adolescence.

That fits the conscript data showing a slowing trend since the 1970s and the NCD-RisC adult series showing a small decline after the 1976 cohort.

Austria compared with its neighbors

Austrian men are now shorter than men in every neighboring country except Hungary, and only by 0.1 cm there. The difference from Germany is 2.5 cm and from Czechia 2.7 cm. Austrian women match Italian women and are taller than Swiss and Hungarian women, but 3.9 cm shorter than Czech women.

The historical comparison is telling. In the 1896 cohort, Austrian men (168.0 cm) were taller than German men (167.2 cm) and level with Czech men (168.0 cm). Austrian women (157.6 cm) were taller than German women (156.0 cm) by 1.6 cm and Czech women (152.8 cm) by 4.8 cm. All three countries grew, but Germany and Czechia grew more.

What Austria's numbers mean

The research does not point to a single reason why Austria fell behind its neighbors, and it would be speculation to name one. What it does show is a population that grew quickly in the first half of the 20th century, slowed earlier than its neighbors, matured faster, and retained persistent social and regional differences in height. NCD-RisC links height to nutrition and health during pregnancy, childhood and adolescence, and Our World in Data notes that such changes over decades reflect living conditions rather than genetics.

Austrian height in everyday terms

An average Austrian man, at 177.4 cm, is about 5′10″, and an average Austrian woman, at 164.6 cm, is about 5′5″. Austria's most famous tall export, actor and bodybuilder Arnold Schwarzenegger, is listed on this site at 188 cm (6′2″), over 10 cm taller than the average Austrian man born in 1996. You can compare him with an average Austrian man and woman in the height comparison tool.

Summary

Austrian men average 177.4 cm and women 164.6 cm, ranking 32nd and 31st in the world. A century ago Austrian women ranked 6th, and in the 1926 cohort Austrian men ranked 11th, but gains slowed after the 1950s and the latest cohort is slightly shorter than the 1976 cohort. Records from 1.7 million conscripts show height rising 4.3 cm among 18-year-olds born between 1951 and 2002, with the trend slowing since the 1970s, faster maturation, a widening gap by education and a distinctive dip in Vienna. Compare Austria with the rest of the world in the average height by country guide.