Average Height in Germany (Men & Women)

Average height in Germany

German adults born in 1996 average 179.9 cm (5′11″) for men and 165.9 cm (5′5″) for women, according to the NCD Risk Factor Collaboration (NCD-RisC). Those are the figures used on this page and in the site's comparison tools. They place German men around 11th of 200 countries and German women around 14th, firmly among the tallest populations in the world.

Germany is also one of the few countries where the national statistics office publishes average height directly. The Federal Statistical Office (Destatis) asks about height and weight in its Mikrozensus household survey, and the 2025 first results were released in 2026. The two sources measure different things in different ways, and both are useful.

Two ways of counting: NCD-RisC and the Mikrozensus

NCD-RisC pooled 1,472 population-based studies with measured heights for more than 18.6 million people in 200 countries. German collaborators included the Robert Koch Institute, the Helmholtz Zentrum München, the German Institute of Human Nutrition and several universities. Only measured heights were used. The study's authors call self-report the single biggest source of bias in adult height data. Their model estimates average height for each birth year from 1896 to 1996, so the headline figure is for Germans who turned 18 around 2014.

The Mikrozensus is Germany's large official household survey. Height and weight are collected in a subsample of the survey (MZ-LFS), and the Destatis tables say they are based on respondents' plausible answers about their own height and weight. In 2025, 53.9 percent of men and 49.2 percent of women answered those questions. The figures are first results (Erstergebnisse), which Destatis may revise when final results are published.

Because the Mikrozensus is self-reported, its averages for young adults come out a little higher than the measured NCD-RisC estimate. Men aged 20–24 reported 181.5 cm, about 1.6 cm above the NCD-RisC figure for men born in 1996. Some of that gap may reflect real growth for people born a few years later. Some may reflect the bias that comes with self-reported height, which is the reason NCD-RisC excluded such data.

Height by age in the Mikrozensus 2025

The Destatis tables break height down by five-year age groups. Read from youngest to oldest, they give a cross-section of a century of German growth.

The striking thing is how flat the table is for adults under 60. Men between 25 and 55 reported between 179.9 and 180.6 cm, and women between 25 and 60 between 167.0 and 167.2 cm. That means Germans born from the mid-1960s to the late 1990s are all about the same height. The decline only starts with people in their sixties and older, who grew up in the 1940s and 1950s and are also affected by the height loss that comes with age.

Euronews, reporting on the same release, summed it up: the average German is 1.73 m tall and weighs 78.3 kg. Women average 1.66 m and men 1.79 m, so women are about 13 cm shorter.

What "average" means in the Destatis figures

Destatis publishes these numbers as part of a feature called "Der Durchschnittsmensch in Deutschland" (the average person in Germany), and it adds a useful warning. The averages are arithmetic means. A mean describes the center of a distribution with a single number, but it can't capture the full picture, and Destatis says explicitly that its averages shouldn't be read as norms. A statistical average, it says, is not an expression of what society expects.

The office also explains when a median is the better measure. An arithmetic mean can be pulled by extreme values and can give a misleading center when a distribution is skewed, as with incomes, where a few very high earners raise the average. Height isn't like that. It's roughly symmetrical, a point Our World in Data makes when it describes adult height within a population as approximately normally distributed. For height, the mean and the median end up close together, so the Destatis averages are a fair description of a typical German adult.

For both sexes together, Destatis reports an average of 172.7 cm, which it rounds to 1.73 m in its summary. That figure is useful for headlines but less so for comparisons, since it depends on the mix of men and women in the population.

A century of German growth

In the NCD-RisC estimates, German men gained 12.7 cm over the century and women 9.9 cm. The biggest gains came between the 1926 and 1956 cohorts, when men added 5.3 cm. After that, growth slowed sharply. Men born in 1996 were only 0.6 cm taller than those born in 1976. Women peaked with the 1976 cohort at about 166.3 cm and were slightly shorter in 1996.

German women stopped growing first

The plateau came earlier and is clearer for women. In the year-by-year NCD-RisC series published by Our World in Data, German women peaked with the 1976 cohort at about 166.3 cm, while men were still edging up at the end of the series. The Mikrozensus shows the same thing from a different angle. Every age group of women from 18 to 60 reported an average between 166.9 and 167.3 cm, a spread of less than half a centimeter across four decades of birth years.

The height gap between men and women depends on which source you use:

For young adults, the two sources agree on a gap of about 14 cm. The all-adult figure is smaller because older men in the survey are much shorter than younger men, while older women differ less from younger women. Over the century, men's gains outpaced women's, which widened the gap by almost 3 cm.

That flattening matches the Mikrozensus age table. Both sources say that Germans stopped getting noticeably taller with the generations born from the 1970s on.

Five centuries of German men

Our World in Data publishes reconstructions of men's heights by birth decade compiled by Joerg Baten and Matthias Blum for the Clio-Infra project. For Germany they reach back to the 16th century, drawing on a variety of historical sources.

The long view shows that German heights didn't rise steadily. Men born in the 1650s were estimated to be about as tall as men born around 1900, and the 18th and mid-19th centuries brought lows of around 163 to 164 cm. The sustained rise only began in the late 19th century. Our World in Data notes that height can serve as a proxy for the "biological standard of living," and the German series traces centuries of ups and downs in that standard.

Body weight alongside height

The Mikrozensus records weight with height, so it also shows how body size has changed. In 2025 German men aged 18 and over reported an average weight of 86.5 kg and women 69.7 kg. Their average BMI was 26.9 and 25.3. Euronews, citing the release, reported that 53.4 percent of adults had a BMI over 25 and 17.9 percent a BMI of 30 or more.

Weight peaks in middle age. Men aged 45 to 60 reported about 89.6 to 89.7 kg, while men aged 18–20 reported 76.7 kg. Height, by contrast, barely varies between 25 and 55. For Germans, the change in body size over adult life is about weight, not height.

The BMI distribution differs by sex as well:

Underweight is rare among German men but more common among young women. In the 18–20 age group, 14.3 percent of women had a BMI under 18.5, the highest share of any group in the tables. Because BMI divides weight by the square of height, small errors in self-reported height carry through to these figures. That's another reason measured surveys are preferred when precision matters.

Germany compared with its neighbors

Germany sits in the middle of a very tall neighborhood. To the north and west, Dutch, Belgian and Danish men are 1.5 to 2.6 cm taller. To the south and east, Swiss, Austrian and Polish men are 1.5 to 2.6 cm shorter. Czech women stand out: at 168.5 cm they're 2.6 cm taller than German women and nearly level with Dutch women.

The Netherlands is the reference point. In the NCD-RisC paper, Dutch men born in the last quarter of the 20th century are the tallest people on the planet, averaging 182.5 cm. German men born in 1896 were 2.2 cm shorter than Dutch men of the same generation. The gap is about the same today.

German heights in practice

A German man in his twenties is typically around 180 cm (5′11″) and a woman around 166 to 167 cm (5′5″ to 5′6″). The 180 cm page shows the conversion and how that height compares around the world. To see where any height falls, try the height percentile calculator, or put two people side by side in the height comparison tool. For other countries on the same basis, see the average height by country hub.