Average Height in Bolivia (Men & Women)

Average height in Bolivia today

Bolivian men born in 1996 average 166.8 cm (5′6″) and Bolivian women 153.9 cm (5′1″), according to the NCD Risk Factor Collaboration (NCD-RisC). These are the values used across this site. Bolivian men rank 154th and Bolivian women 184th of 200 countries and territories. In South America, Bolivia ranks 11th of 12 countries for both sexes, ahead only of Peru.

An average Bolivian man is close to 166 cm, about 5′5½″. An average Bolivian woman is just over 5′0″, about a centimeter short of 5′1″ (154.9 cm).

Bolivia is a country of extremes in altitude, from the high Andean plateau to the Amazon lowlands. As this page shows, its national survey data reveal height differences between those regions that are as large as the differences between some countries.

How the NCD-RisC estimates work

NCD-RisC's 2016 study in eLife pooled 1,472 population-based data sources with measurements of more than 18.6 million people born between 1896 and 1996. A Bayesian model then estimated mean height at age 18 for every country and every birth cohort. Each figure is tied to the year people were born, so it reflects the nutrition and health conditions of their childhood. The 1996 figure describes young Bolivian adults who grew up in the late 1990s and 2000s, not the whole adult population.

A century of steady, unfinished growth

Bolivian men gained 10.5 cm over the century (84th largest gain of 200 countries) and women 10.7 cm (56th). Bolivia's starting point was very low. Women born in 1896 averaged just 143.2 cm, and the eLife study notes that people born in 1896 were shortest in Asia and in Central and Andean Latin America.

Unlike many countries, Bolivia has not clearly stopped growing. Both sexes reach their highest estimated average with the most recent cohort. Women in particular added 1.5 cm between the 1976 and 1996 cohorts, more than in the previous twenty years. That fits the eLife observation that height is still increasing in many Latin American countries.

Evidence from women's birth cohorts

An independent check comes from a 2011 study in PLOS ONE by Subramanian, Özaltin and Finlay, which compared women's heights across birth cohorts in 54 low- and middle-income countries using Demographic and Health Surveys. Bolivia's 2003 survey measured 10,302 women aged 25 to 49, who averaged 151.8 cm (standard deviation 5.9 cm) and were born on average in 1972. The study found a statistically significant increase across birth cohorts in Bolivia of about 0.05 cm per year of birth, or roughly half a centimeter per decade.

The gains were not equal. Among women in the two richest wealth groups, height rose about 0.10 cm per birth year, against 0.06 cm per year in the two poorest groups. Across all cohorts, each step up the five wealth groups was associated with about 0.76 cm of extra height.

The national survey: ENDSA 2008

Bolivia's National Demography and Health Survey (ENDSA) 2008, carried out with the international DHS Program, measured the height and weight of 16,485 women aged 15 to 49. It is one of the richest sources of measured height in the country, broken down by age, region, department, education and wealth.

What the survey did and did not measure

According to the report, the anthropometry module weighed and measured women and their children born after January 2003, following international standards and using precision instruments. Men were not measured. That means the figures for Bolivian men on this page rest on the NCD-RisC model rather than on a recent national measurement of men, while the figures for women can be checked against a large measured sample.

Overall results

The national average for women aged 15 to 49 was 152.2 cm, almost unchanged from 152.1 cm in the 2003 survey. In all, 9.5% of women were shorter than 145 cm, down from 10.3% in 2003. Younger women were taller:

The 2.3 cm gap between teenagers and women in their forties is in line with the slow, continuing rise in the NCD-RisC estimates.

Altiplano, valleys and lowlands

The survey report divides Bolivia into three ecological zones. The Altiplano, in the west, covers 28% of the territory and includes the departments of La Paz, Oruro and Potosí. The Valle (valleys) in the center covers 13% and includes Chuquisaca, Cochabamba and Tarija. The Llano (lowlands) in the north and east is the largest zone, covering 59%, with Santa Cruz, Beni and Pando. The Altiplano itself, according to Wikipedia, is a high plateau in the central Andes with an average elevation of about 3,750 m (12,300 ft).

Height followed the landscape:

The difference between Potosí and Santa Cruz or Beni, 4 cm, is larger than the gap between Bolivia and Ecuador as a whole. The survey does not try to separate the effects of altitude from those of poverty, so the table describes where shorter women live rather than proving that altitude itself causes shorter stature.

Poor and less poor municipalities

The survey also grouped women by the poverty level of the municipality they lived in, which gives a second view of the same gradient:

Women in the poorest municipalities were 3.6 cm shorter on average than women in the departmental capitals, and more than twice as likely to be under 145 cm. El Alto, which the survey reports as a separate category, sits close to the medium-poverty group despite being urban, which shows that "urban" alone does not guarantee taller residents.

Wealth, schooling and residence

The social differences were even larger than the regional ones:

A 6.2 cm gap between women with higher education and those with no schooling is bigger than the century-long gain for women in many countries. It is a clear example of a point made by Our World in Data: within a country, inequality in height often mirrors inequality in living conditions.

Indigenous peoples and the Andes

In Bolivia's 2012 census, as summarized in Wikipedia's demographics article, 18.5% of the population identified as Quechua and 17.2% as Aymara, the two largest Indigenous groups. The ENDSA report notes that Quechua and Aymara are spoken especially in the Altiplano and valley regions.

There is little recent published height data by ethnic group. Wikipedia's international height table, citing Barry Bogin's textbook Patterns of Human Growth, lists Aymara adults aged 20 to 29 measured in the 1970s at 162 cm for men and 149 cm for women. Those figures are below today's national estimates, but they are half a century old and come from a specific sample, so they should not be read as a current ethnic average.

Children: stunting is falling fast

Because adult height is largely set in childhood, child stunting rates are a preview of future adult heights. The World Bank records the following for Bolivian children under five:

In 2008, the ENDSA report put stunting at 27% under the WHO growth standard and described the level as among the highest in Latin America, about twice the rate in Colombia, Brazil or the Dominican Republic. The fall to around 16% by 2016 is a major improvement. Children who grew up after that decline are likely to be taller as adults than the cohorts measured so far.

The ENDSA data also show a newer challenge. Mean BMI among women aged 15 to 49 was 25.8, and half were overweight or obese, so the country now faces stunting in children alongside excess weight in adults.

Bolivia compared with South America

Using NCD-RisC data for the 1996 cohort:

Bolivia's closest matches are its Andean neighbors. Bolivian men are 1.6 cm taller than Peruvian men and only 0.3 cm shorter than Ecuadorian men. Its other neighbors are much taller: Brazilian and Argentine men are 7 to 8 cm taller, and Paraguayan men 6 cm taller. In the 2011 PLOS ONE analysis, Bolivian and Peruvian women had very similar averages, 151.8 cm and 151.3 cm, and both showed significant height gains across birth cohorts.

For every country, see average height by country.

Using the averages

• Region matters. A woman from Santa Cruz or Beni is, on average, taller than one from Potosí by about 4 cm.
• Generations differ. Teenage women in 2008 were over 2 cm taller than women in their forties.
• Compare properly. To see where a particular height falls, use the height percentile calculator.
• Talk to a doctor about children. A child's growth should be checked by a health professional with growth charts.

Key takeaways

• Bolivian men born in 1996 average 166.8 cm and women 153.9 cm (NCD-RisC), second shortest in South America after Peru.
• Height has risen by about 10.5 cm over the century and is still rising, especially for women.
• ENDSA 2008 measured women at 152.2 cm on average, with 151.2 cm in the Altiplano and 154.3 cm in the lowlands.
• Wealth and schooling are tied to differences of 5 to 6 cm among Bolivian women.
• Child stunting fell from 34.4% in 1994 to 16.1% in 2016, pointing to taller future generations.