Average Height in Bosnia and Herzegovina (Men & Women)

Bosnia and Herzegovina's average height

Bosnia and Herzegovina is part of the Dinaric Alps, a mountain region that anthropologists have described as home to some of the tallest people in Europe for more than a century. In the NCD Risk Factor Collaboration (NCD-RisC) estimates used on this site, Bosnian men born in 1996 average 180.9 cm (5′11″) and Bosnian women 165.8 cm (5′5″). Men rank 6th of 200 countries and women 16th.

These values describe a birth cohort: people born in one year and measured once grown. NCD-RisC pooled 1,472 population-based studies that measured, rather than asked about, height in more than 18.6 million people. Its estimates for countries with few national surveys rely partly on information from neighbors in the same region, and the paper notes that limited data mean wider uncertainty. Bosnia and Herzegovina falls into that category, which is why the dedicated field surveys described below matter so much. You can check any height against these averages with the height percentile calculator.

A century of change

Men gained 12.5 cm over the century and women 12.0 cm. Most of that came between the 1896 and 1956 cohorts. Since 1976, the estimates show men essentially flat and women down by 1.5 cm, which makes Bosnia one of the few tall countries in the site's data where women's estimated height fell noticeably in the last cohort. The resulting 15.1 cm gap between the sexes is among the largest in Europe.

Historical figures suggest the region was tall even before the modern era. The 2017 survey paper discussed below cites older anthropological work reporting mean heights of 175–176 cm for men from Herzegovina at the end of the 19th century, well above the NCD-RisC estimate for the country as a whole in 1896.

A forensic study adds an unusual angle. Researchers measured the long bones of men killed in the Second World War in Slovenia and men killed in the Bosnian War, and reported a trend toward longer femurs and tibias of about 0.88 cm per decade between those two groups. Bone length is only an indirect guide to stature, but it points the same way as the NCD-RisC trend.

The "mountains of giants" survey

The most detailed modern data come from a survey led by Pavel Grasgruber of Masaryk University in the Czech Republic with colleagues from the University of Montenegro. Published in Royal Society Open Science in 2017 under the title "The mountains of giants," it measured 3,192 boys aged about 18 (range 17 to 20) at 97 schools in 37 towns during 2015 and 2016, using a portable stadiometer.

The headline results:

• National average, weighted by population: 181.2 cm
• Bosniak-Croat Federation: 181.4 cm
• Republika Srpska: 180.9 cm
• Herzegovina: 183.4 cm; Bosnia: 180.8 cm

The authors wrote that 181.2 cm was one of the highest national values in the world, significantly surpassed only by the Netherlands (183.8 cm), Montenegro (183.2 cm) and Iceland (181.8 cm). They described young men from Herzegovina, together with the Dutch, Montenegrins and Dalmatians, as among the tallest in the world.

Because the boys were born between 1995 and 1998, the authors judged that their growth was only marginally affected by the hardships of the Bosnian war, which officially ended in December 1995.

How the survey was done, and older claims it corrected

The fieldwork was part of a larger project by Masaryk University and the University of Montenegro that, by the time of publication, had measured more than 6,000 boys and several thousand girls across Bosnia, Herzegovina, the Croatian Adriatic coast, Montenegro and Kosovo. In Bosnia, the team used a mobile SECA 213 stadiometer and a purpose-built device for sitting height and arm span. Boys were assigned to regions by their self-reported place of residence, and the national figure was weighted by the population of each region, which is why the unweighted sample mean is higher than the 181.2 cm headline.

The survey also tested older claims. A 2005 study by J.-C. Pineau and colleagues had reported 185.2 cm for 17-year-olds in Herzegovina. Grasgruber's team found averages that high only in a narrow strip along the western border of Herzegovina, and noted that not all of Pineau's data had been measured by the authors themselves. Unpublished data from another researcher, cited in the paper, covering 210 men aged 20 to 25, showed 182.1 cm overall, ranging from about 181 cm in Una-Sana, Tuzla and Zenica-Doboj to about 184.5 cm in Herzegovina-Neretva and Sarajevo, broadly consistent with the 2015–2016 pattern.

Regional differences: a 4.8 cm spread

The survey found a striking amount of variation inside the country. Average heights in its 17 regions ranged from 179.7 cm in Doboj to 184.5 cm in Trebinje, a difference of 4.8 cm.

The tallest band runs between Trebinje and Livno along the southwestern edge of the country. Heights drop toward the north, and the paper notes an especially steep fall from 183.7 cm in Canton 10/Livno to 180.3 cm in the Mrkonjić Grad region, which are separated by mountain ranges about 2,000 m high.

Northern Bosnia is shorter but catching up. The survey's sample from Tuzla high schools averaged 180.5 cm, which the authors used to estimate a local secular trend of about 1.4 cm per decade since 1996. Tuzla is the most populous region, with 13.1% of the population, so its trend will weigh heavily on the national average in future.

Within Mostar, Croat boys averaged 182.9 cm and Bosniak boys 181.7 cm, though the difference was not statistically significant.

Nutrition, income and genes

The survey team compared regional heights with economic and food statistics, and the results are among the most debated in the field.

Diet and income

Within the Federation, a regression model combining net wages, unemployment, pigs per capita and maize per capita could explain almost all of the regional differences in height. The authors note that maize, which is eaten in large amounts in Bosnia, has low protein quality, and that the religious prohibition of pork among Bosniaks is the main dietary difference between Bosniaks and Croats. Unemployment, surprisingly, showed no correlation with height across the 17 regions, which the authors attributed to high economic self-sufficiency and household farming.

They also compared a protein quality ratio in national diets and found it very low in Bosnia (0.68) compared with the Netherlands (2.55). Protein intake in Bosnia has been improving, but the authors say the 2008 economic crisis slowed that progress.

The genetic hypothesis

Because nutrition and socioeconomic conditions in the country are, in the authors' words, still deeply suboptimal, they conclude that the most likely explanation for Herzegovina's exceptional height lies in genetics. They link it to the spread of the Y-chromosome lineage I-M170, whose frequency exceeds 70% in Herzegovina and reaches its global peak among Croats there. Across 43 European countries and the USA, male height correlated with the frequency of this lineage (r = 0.65).

A 2026 follow-up in Human Genomics by the same group refines the picture. It reports that across Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia and Montenegro, male height rises in step with certain ancient ancestry components, and it estimates that the gap between genetic and environmental height potential is especially large in Bosnia and Herzegovina, about 7 cm. These are hypotheses from one research group rather than consensus, but they explain why the region attracts so much attention.

Our World in Data offers a useful counterweight: within populations, most height variation is genetic, but differences between generations and countries largely track nutrition and health. Bosnia's century of gains, 12.5 cm for men, could not have come from genetic change.

Other measured studies

Smaller studies from the University of Montenegro group support the survey's findings:

• University of Banja Luka (2015): 178 male students averaged 183.87 cm, and 34 female students 171.82 cm. The authors suggested Bosnia and Herzegovina might be one of the tallest nations on Earth, but a university sample is not representative, and 34 women is far too few to generalize.
• Universities of Sarajevo and Mostar (2017): 193 male students averaged 183.84 cm, with an arm span of 185.65 cm.

Both studies used the International Society for the Advancement of Kinanthropometry (ISAK) protocol and found that arm span predicts height well, though the equations differ from those of other populations.

For women, data remain thin. The 2022 Biology review by Grasgruber and colleagues notes that the height of young Bosnian women had not been measured in a large sample, but suggests it is probably similar to Serbian women at about 167 cm, which is slightly above the NCD-RisC estimate.

Bosnian teenagers in the world ranking

NCD-RisC's 2020 study in The Lancet ranked 19-year-olds in 200 countries in 2019. Bosnian boys were the fourth tallest in the world, after the Netherlands, Montenegro and Estonia. The same paper listed Bosnia and Herzegovina, with Romania and Japan, among countries where 19-year-old girls had a relatively low body-mass index.

Bosnia and Herzegovina and its neighbors

The NCD-RisC estimates place Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian men within 0.3 cm of each other, and Montenegro lower. Field surveys tell a different story for Montenegro, whose 18-year-olds averaged 182.9 cm in 2013, above any national figure for Bosnia. See the Montenegro, Croatia and Serbia pages for those comparisons.

What these heights mean

An average Bosnian man at 180.9 cm stands about 5′11″, and a young man from Herzegovina at 183.4 cm is just over 6′0″, the same as the average young Dutchman. For how that compares worldwide, see the 183 cm page. Use the average height hub to compare Bosnia and Herzegovina with any other country.