Average Height in Greece (Men & Women)

Average height in Greece today

Greek men born in 1996 average 177.3 cm (5′10″) and Greek women 164.9 cm (5′5″), according to the NCD Risk Factor Collaboration (NCD-RisC). These are the figures used throughout this page. Out of 200 countries and territories, Greek men rank 34th and Greek women 26th. That makes Greece one of the few countries where women rank higher on the world table than men, and it puts Greeks among the tallest people in Southern Europe.

That last row is what makes Greece stand out. A gain of nearly 15 cm in a century is one of the largest anywhere in Europe, and the 2016 NCD-RisC study in eLife mentions Greece by name as a Southern European example of very large increases. Greek men today are just under the 5′10″ (177.8 cm) mark, while their great-grandfathers born in the 1890s averaged about 5′4″.

How these averages are produced

NCD-RisC pooled 1,472 population-based studies with measurements from more than 18.6 million people born between 1896 and 1996. A Bayesian statistical model then estimated mean height at age 18 for each country and each birth cohort. Our World in Data explains why cohorts are the right unit. Adult height mainly records the nutrition and disease a person experienced while growing, so grouping by birth year links each figure to a particular childhood environment.

The model also gives an uncertainty range. For Greek men born in 1996, the 95% credible interval is 175.7 to 179.0 cm; for women it is 163.3 to 166.3 cm. Those ranges are narrower than for many countries with sparse data, which means the Greek estimates are among the better-anchored in the dataset.

One of Europe's steepest height gains

The NCD-RisC series shows the size of the change across five generations:

Three phases stand out. Between the 1896 and 1926 cohorts, men gained about 4.6 cm. Between 1926 and 1956 the pace accelerated sharply, with men gaining 6.6 cm and women 5.5 cm in 30 years. Between 1956 and 1976 men added another 3.3 cm. After that, men's height almost stops rising. In the year-by-year NCD-RisC data, Greek men peak with the 1986 cohort at 177.4 cm. Women, by contrast, were still gaining in the most recent cohorts, adding 1.3 cm between 1976 and 1996.

The result is that a Greek woman born in 1996 is taller than a Greek man born in 1926. That is a rare reversal, and it shows how much of adult height depends on childhood conditions rather than fixed national traits.

How Greece ranks for growth

Measured against all 200 countries in the NCD-RisC data, the Greek gain is exceptional. The 14.8 cm increase for men between the 1896 and 1996 cohorts is the 4th largest in the world, and the 14.3 cm increase for women ranks 7th. The study's headline examples of growth are South Korean women (20.2 cm) and Iranian men (16.5 cm), and it lists Greece alongside Japan, Serbia, Poland and others as places with very large gains.

What makes the Greek case unusual is the starting point. In 1896, Greek men were shorter than Italian men by about 2 cm and much shorter than men in Serbia (167.4 cm) or Austria (168.0 cm). Greece was not among the tallest countries in the region then. It climbed into the upper third of the world table over roughly three generations.

Greece and Italy: overtaking and being overtaken

The year-by-year data show an interesting race with Italy. Italian men born in 1896 averaged 164.7 cm, well ahead of Greek men at 162.5 cm. By the 1946 cohort the order had flipped, with Greek men at 171.3 cm and Italian men at 170.8 cm, and Greek men stayed slightly ahead for the next four decades. In the 1986 cohort they were almost level (177.4 cm against 177.3 cm). By 1996, Italian men had edged back in front, at 177.8 cm against 177.3 cm, because Italian height was still rising while Greek men's height had flattened.

Women followed a different path. Greek women overtook Italian women in the 1940s cohorts too, but they have stayed ahead, and in 1996 they were still 0.3 cm taller. For comparison, Spanish women born in 1996 average 163.4 cm, 1.5 cm less than Greek women.

Why a taller population matters

Height is more than a curiosity for researchers. The eLife authors note that being taller is associated with longer life, more education and higher earnings, and that greater adult height is linked to lower risk of cardiovascular and respiratory disease while being harmful for some other conditions. For that reason, a gain as large as Greece's is read as a sign of large improvements in childhood nutrition and health, rather than as a goal in itself. Our World in Data makes a similar point, treating average height as an indirect measure of living standards.

What conscript records show

Greece has measured its young men at military induction for decades, and pediatric endocrinologists at the University of Athens have used those measurements to track the trend directly.

From 167.9 cm to 178 cm

A 2008 conference report by Fytanidis, Papadimitriou and colleagues compared new conscript data with earlier surveys from 1968 and 1990:

A full paper from the same group, published in Acta Paediatrica in 2008 under the title "Greek young men grow taller", measured 3,982 conscripts aged 18 to 26 at army camps across Greece between May 2006 and May 2007. It reported a mean height of 178.06 cm (standard deviation 7.05 cm) and a gain from 175.7 cm in 1990, or 1.47 cm per decade. The two reports differ slightly because they rest on different numbers of men, but both describe the same picture: a very rapid rise until 1990, then a slower one.

Both reports reached the same conclusion: Greek men had not yet exhausted their growth potential. That was a notable finding, since several wealthy countries had already stopped getting taller by then. The NCD-RisC model, which includes later data, suggests the rise has since levelled off for men born in the late 1980s and 1990s.

Education and residence

The conscript studies also show a social gradient. In the 2008 conference data, urban conscripts averaged 178.1 cm and rural conscripts 176.4 cm, a statistically significant gap. Among men with nine years of schooling or fewer, height was about 174 cm with no urban-rural difference. Among those with ten or more years of schooling, it was about 177 to 178 cm. The Acta Paediatrica paper likewise found height positively correlated with place of residence and with education.

The urban-rural pattern has not been constant. A summary of the 1990 conscript survey reported no significant difference between men from urban and rural areas, whereas the 1968 survey had found one. The gap that reappeared in 2006–2007 may reflect who lived in cities by then, but the studies do not settle that question.

Crete: a regional window into the past

Regional studies add texture that national averages hide. A 2019 paper in Anthropological Notebooks by Capocasa, Fytanidis, Masedu and Danubio examined adult height on Crete around the turn of the 20th century, analysed by sex and birth cohort for the whole island and its four prefectures.

The study reported mean heights of 168.7 cm for men and 155.4 cm for women, with male height increasing over time. Those values were higher than the heights recorded for Cretan conscripts born between 1927 and 1945. Men from the prefecture of Chania were significantly taller than men from the other three prefectures. The authors offered two possible explanations: Crete was relatively prosperous before it joined Greece, and Chania may have benefited from relative isolation from infectious diseases spread along trade routes. They presented the second idea as a suggestion rather than a proven cause.

The Cretan men in that study were noticeably taller than the 162.5 cm NCD-RisC estimate for all Greek men born in 1896. Regional samples from a specific period can differ from national modelled estimates, which is one reason researchers combine many sources.

Greece compared with its neighbors

Using the same NCD-RisC data for the 1996 cohort, Greece sits in the middle of a region with very different height levels:

Greek men are about half a centimeter shorter than Italian men, while Greek women are slightly taller than Italian women. Further north, the Western Balkans hold some of the tallest populations in the world, and Serbian men are more than 3 cm taller than Greeks. To the east, Turkish men average 3.1 cm less. Elsewhere on the Mediterranean, Greeks are clearly taller than people in Portugal, where men average 172.9 cm. For the full table, see average height by country.

Putting the numbers in context

For a sense of scale, the conscript data imply that most young Greek men fall within about 7 cm of the mean, since the standard deviation in the 2006–2007 survey was just over 7 cm. A Greek man of 185 cm is tall but not unusual. One of 165 cm is short by today's standard, though he would have been above average for men born in the 1920s.

You can see where any height falls against these figures with the height percentile calculator, or line up two people with the height difference calculator.

National averages are a description of a population, not a target for an individual. Children who seem to be growing unusually slowly or quickly should be assessed by a doctor with proper growth charts.

Key takeaways

• Greek men born in 1996 average 177.3 cm and women 164.9 cm, ranking 34th and 26th of 200 countries in NCD-RisC.
• Both sexes gained more than 14 cm over the century, one of the steepest rises in Europe.
• Conscripts went from 167.9 cm in 1968 to 175.7 cm in 1990 and about 178 cm in 2006–2007, with gains slowing after 1990.
• Recent conscript studies found taller men in cities and among those with more schooling.
• Greeks are shorter than their Balkan neighbors to the north but taller than Turks, Albanians and Cypriots.