Average Height in Cambodia (Men & Women)

Average height in Cambodia today

Cambodian men born in 1996 average 163.3 cm (5′4″) and Cambodian women 152.9 cm (5′0″), according to the NCD Risk Factor Collaboration (NCD-RisC). These are the figures used throughout this site. They put Cambodia in the shortest tenth of the world: men rank 190th and women 189th of 200 countries and territories. Within Asia, Cambodia ranks 44th of 49 for men and 42nd for women.

An average Cambodian man is almost exactly 163 cm, about 5′4″. An average Cambodian woman is just under 153 cm, close to 152 cm (5′0″).

Cambodia is unusual in having good measured data for adults of both sexes, from a national health survey, alongside regular demographic and health surveys that measure women and children. This page uses all of them.

What NCD-RisC measures

NCD-RisC's 2016 study in eLife pooled 1,472 population-based data sources with height measurements from more than 18.6 million people born between 1896 and 1996. A Bayesian model estimated mean height at age 18 for each country and birth cohort. Our World in Data explains why birth year is the right unit: adult height is mostly fixed by the nutrition and disease a person experiences in childhood and adolescence, so each cohort reflects the conditions in which it grew up.

That framing is particularly important in Cambodia, where the conditions of childhood changed abruptly within a few years.

A century of change: early gains, then a long stall

Men gained 8.5 cm over the century, ranking 120th of 200 countries, and women gained 6.7 cm, ranking 128th. Most of that growth came early. Between the 1896 and 1956 cohorts, men gained almost 7 cm and women more than 7 cm. In the forty years after that, men added just 1.5 cm, and women's height turned slightly downward. In the year-by-year estimates, Cambodian women reach their highest average with the 1962 cohort, at 153.5 cm, and women born in 1996 are 0.6 cm shorter.

No gain across the women of 2005

An independent analysis supports the stall for women. A 2011 study in PLOS ONE by Subramanian, Özaltin and Finlay used Demographic and Health Surveys from 54 low- and middle-income countries to examine height across birth cohorts of women aged 25 to 49. Cambodia's 2005 survey measured 5,081 women, who averaged 152.4 cm (standard deviation 5.4 cm) and were born on average in 1968–69. The authors found that height in most countries outside Africa had increased across cohorts, but singled out Cambodia as an exception that "experienced no significant change". The estimated change per birth year was essentially zero.

The same study found that richer women were taller: in Cambodia, height rose by about 0.2 cm for each step up the five household wealth groups. It also noted that 28% of the Cambodian women in the sample had no schooling.

Historical context: the Khmer Rouge years

The cohorts where Cambodian height stops rising were children during one of the worst catastrophes of the 20th century. Between 1975 and 1979 the Khmer Rouge regime emptied the cities and forced people into labor camps in the countryside, where, as Wikipedia's article on the Cambodian genocide summarizes, mass executions, forced labor, starvation and disease were widespread. Demographic studies discussed in that article estimate total deaths from the period in the range of one to three million. The regime was toppled after the Vietnamese invasion in 1978.

It is tempting to draw a straight line from famine to stunted adult height, and starvation during childhood is exactly the kind of condition that Our World in Data describes as limiting growth. But none of the studies used here isolates the effect of that period on Cambodian height. The stall in NCD-RisC begins with women born in the early 1960s, before the Khmer Rouge took power, and continues for cohorts born decades later. Poverty, disease and long-running conflict before and after 1975 all affected the same generations. The honest conclusion is that the data show the stall clearly, but not a single cause.

The 2010 STEPS survey: measured adults of both sexes

The most complete measurement of Cambodian adults comes from the national STEPS survey of non-communicable disease risk factors, carried out by the University of Health Sciences and the Preventive Medicine Department of the Ministry of Health with support from the World Health Organization, and published in September 2010. According to the report, height was measured with a portable device that reads up to 210 cm with a precision of half a centimeter.

Several things stand out. Men in the youngest group were 2.2 cm taller than men in the oldest group, consistent with modest gains over time. Women in the youngest group, born roughly between 1976 and 1985, were no taller than women aged 35 to 44. That matches both the NCD-RisC estimates and the 2011 PLOS ONE finding of no cohort gain for women.

The survey also compared urban and rural adults. Urban men averaged 162.6 cm and rural men 161.6 cm; urban women 152.4 cm and rural women 151.8 cm. The urban advantage was small, about a centimeter for men and less for women. The weight gap was larger: urban men averaged 59.9 kg against 56.2 kg for rural men, and urban women 54.0 kg against 50.0 kg for rural women. Across all ages, men averaged 56.8 kg and women 50.8 kg.

The STEPS averages, 161.7 cm and 151.9 cm, are slightly below the NCD-RisC figures for the 1996 cohort. That is expected, since the survey included adults up to age 64, born as early as the mid-1940s.

Women's height and children's growth today

Short stature among women

The Cambodia Demographic and Health Survey 2021–22, run by the National Institute of Statistics and the Ministry of Health, measured women's height to assess nutrition. Height data were collected for 99% of eligible women. The report is candid about practical problems: for 3% of women, hairstyles or ornaments interfered with the height measurement, a reminder that even careful field surveys carry small errors. Children were also remeasured, both at random and when their first results were flagged, to check data quality. Overall, 3.9% of women aged 20 to 49 were shorter than 145 cm, the cut-off the survey uses for short stature. The share varied with age, place and income:

The lower share among women in their twenties than in their forties hints at a small improvement for younger women, even though average height has barely moved.

A rapid fall in child stunting

The more hopeful signal is in children. Stunting, or low height for age, has dropped steeply. World Bank data record:

The 2021–22 DHS report describes the same trend, with stunting falling consistently from 50% in 2000 to 22% in 2021–22. Stunting remains highest in Ratanak Kiri, at 39%, and is higher among children of thin mothers and those reported small at birth. Because adult height is largely set in childhood, Cambodians born in the 2010s may well end up taller than the stalled cohorts of the late 20th century.

Heavier faster than taller

The same surveys show body weight changing much faster than height. In the 2010 STEPS survey, the mean body-mass index of adults aged 25 to 64 was 21.8, and for women it was 22.0. In the 2021–22 DHS, women aged 20 to 49 had a mean BMI of 23.6, and 32.6% were overweight or obese, while only 7.1% were thin. The two surveys cover different age ranges and are not strictly comparable, but the direction is clear: over roughly a decade, Cambodian women's average height barely moved while their average weight rose.

The DHS also shows the overweight share climbing steeply with age, from 17.4% among women in their twenties to 47.3% among women in their forties. That pattern matters for anyone using height and weight together, for example in the body visualizer, because BMI categories depend on both.

Cambodia compared with its neighbors

Using NCD-RisC data for the 1996 cohort:

Thai men are 5.9 cm taller than Cambodian men, and Thai women 5.0 cm taller. The gap with Vietnam is about 1 cm for both sexes. Only Laos, among Cambodia's neighbors, is shorter. For all countries, see average height by country.

Using these numbers

• Generations differ. In the STEPS survey, adults aged 55 to 64 were about 2 cm (men) and 1.4 cm (women) shorter than those aged 25 to 34.
• Wealth and schooling matter. In the DHS data, short stature among women was four times as common in the poorest households as in the richest.
• Check a height properly. The height percentile calculator shows how common a given height is.
• Children need a doctor, not an average. Concerns about a child's growth should be assessed by a health professional with growth charts.

Key takeaways

• Cambodian men born in 1996 average 163.3 cm and women 152.9 cm (NCD-RisC), ranking around 190th of 200.
• Height rose by about 7 cm in cohorts born before the late 1950s, then stalled; women's height peaked with the 1962 cohort.
• The 2010 STEPS survey measured adults at 161.7 cm for men and 151.9 cm for women, with young women no taller than older ones.
• Child stunting fell from 58.6% in 1996 to 21.9% in 2021, which may lift future adult heights.
• Cambodians are taller than Lao people but shorter than Thais and Vietnamese.