Average Height in Indonesia (Men & Women)

Average height in Indonesia today

Indonesian men born in 1996 reach an average adult height of 163.6 cm (5′4″), and Indonesian women 152.8 cm (5′0″), according to the NCD Risk Factor Collaboration (NCD-RisC). Its 2016 study in eLife pooled 1,472 population-based studies that measured more than 18.6 million people, and estimated mean height for every birth year from 1896 to 1996 in 200 countries.

By that measure, Indonesia ranks among the shorter nations. Its men are 187th of 200 and its women 191st. The gap between men and women is 10.8 cm, smaller than in most of the world's large countries.

To see these heights next to everyday objects, the 164 cm page is closest to the typical Indonesian man and the 152 cm page to the typical Indonesian woman.

How these numbers are produced

NCD-RisC estimates the height of a birth cohort, the people born in one year, at age 18. That makes countries with very different survey histories comparable. Only studies that actually measured people were used, and studies of special groups, such as particular ethnic minorities or hospital patients, were excluded. A Bayesian statistical model then fills gaps in years and places with less data by borrowing strength from neighboring countries and regions.

For Indonesia, a country of thousands of islands and hundreds of ethnic groups, a single national figure inevitably hides a lot of variation. Indonesia's own health surveys show just how much, as described below.

A century of change in Indonesian height

Over the century, Indonesian men gained 9.0 cm and women 8.1 cm. That is far more than India or Pakistan managed, but much less than Japan or South Korea. NCD-RisC found that people born in 1896 were shortest in Asia and in Central and Andean Latin America. Indonesia's 1896 cohort, with men at 154.6 cm and women at 144.7 cm, fits that pattern.

The pace of change has varied. Men gained 3.4 cm between the 1896 and 1926 cohorts and 3.7 cm between 1926 and 1956, but only 1.9 cm across the 40 years from 1956 to 1996. Women's gains slowed in a similar way and then picked up a little for the most recent cohort, adding 1.3 cm between 1976 and 1996.

Indonesian researchers describe the recent change in similar terms. In a 2018 paper, Aman Pulungan, Madarina Julia and Jose Batubara of the Indonesian Pediatric Society, working with Michael Hermanussen of Germany's University of Kiel, wrote that average height had risen by some 5 cm over the previous 50 years, but that a sustained secular trend like those in Europe and Japan had not yet been detected.

Indonesia's national health surveys

Indonesia's main source of measured height is the national basic health survey, Riset Kesehatan Dasar (Riskesdas), run by the Ministry of Health. The 2013 round used multistage sampling at national, provincial and district level, covering households in 33 provinces and 497 regencies and municipalities.

Pulungan and colleagues used more than 300,000 child and adolescent measurements from that survey to build new national growth charts. Their tables include average height at age 18.5 for every province. Across Indonesia as a whole, their synthetic reference puts 18.5-year-old boys at about 162.8 cm and girls at about 153.3 cm. That is very close to the NCD-RisC estimates for adults born in 1996.

Big differences between provinces

The provincial breakdown is the most useful part of the Indonesian data. Height at 18.5 years varies by more than 7 cm for young men and nearly 6 cm for young women from one end of the archipelago to the other.

Several patterns stand out:

• Bali tops both lists. Balinese young men are about 7.5 cm taller than young men in Papua.
• Java is tall. The densely populated Javanese provinces, including Jakarta, Yogyakarta and Central Java, cluster near the top for both sexes.
• Eastern Indonesia is shorter. Papua, East Nusa Tenggara, Gorontalo and several Sulawesi provinces cluster near the bottom.

Income versus crowding

The authors tested what explained these regional differences, and the results were unexpected. Per capita income had only a weak association with early adult height (a correlation of 0.35). They point out that people in Bali, with a per capita income of about US$3,200, were on average 5 cm taller than people in Jambi, who have a similar income. Population density, by contrast, was strongly linked to the height of 18-year-old men. Even after excluding Jakarta, density explained about 34% of the variation in height between provinces (a correlation of 0.58).

The authors did not claim that crowding itself makes people taller. Their point was that the usual assumption, that short provinces are short simply because they are poor or undernourished, does not explain Indonesia's map.

The stunting debate

Child stunting, meaning a height for age more than two standard deviations below the WHO reference median, has been one of Indonesia's most discussed public health issues. The 2013 Riskesdas reported stunting in 37.2% of children under five. WHO and UNICEF survey estimates compiled by Our World in Data show the rate falling over the following decade:

Our World in Data, summarizing the wider research, explains that stunting mostly happens in the first two years of life and is strongly linked to nutrition and childhood illness, although some catch-up growth is possible when conditions improve.

Pulungan and colleagues took a more skeptical position for Indonesia specifically. They argued that the WHO growth references match Indonesian children poorly. They also argued that using "stunting" as a synonym for undernutrition can misclassify healthy but genetically short children, and that national synthetic growth charts would help tell children who need medical or nutritional help apart from those who are simply short compared with a global reference. Their paper also acknowledges the mainstream view, citing The Lancet's series linking early stunting to lower adult height and schooling. Both views appear in the scientific literature. Whichever is right, the fall in measured stunting over two decades is likely to show up eventually as taller adults.

Why the choice of growth chart matters

The debate over stunting in Indonesia is really a debate about the yardstick. The 2018 paper explains how the international references were built. The WHO's 2006 child growth standards draw on longitudinal growth studies from birth to 24 months plus cross-sectional data up to 72 months, and the WHO references for ages 5 to 19 are based on US cross-sectional growth data from 1977. The authors note that modern Europeans exceed these references by up to one standard deviation in height, while many other populations fall below them. By their estimate, Indonesian adult men are on average some 12 cm shorter than modern WHO reference males.

Against such a tall yardstick, a large share of Indonesian children will fall below the −2 standard deviation cut-off even if they are healthy. In the 2013 survey, 37.2% of children under five were classified as stunted and 12.1% as wasted (too thin for their height), but only 2.5% were both. The authors read that as a sign that most short children were short without being thin. They describe correct targeting of the children who really need care and intervention as the main motive for creating their synthetic charts.

The question has practical stakes. The paper notes that the Indonesian government planned to spend millions of dollars on reducing shortness. Whether a child is counted as stunted depends partly on which chart is used, and that affects how such money is targeted. For readers outside Indonesia, the lesson is that the same child can look "short" or "normal" depending on the reference population, and that national averages such as 163.6 cm need to be read in that light.

Indonesia among its neighbors

Indonesian men are almost exactly as tall as men in Papua New Guinea, Cambodia and the Philippines. Indonesian women are 3.2 cm taller than Filipino women. Malaysia and Thailand are a few centimeters taller, and Singapore, a wealthy city-state, about 9 cm taller for men. NCD-RisC lists East Timor, Indonesia's immediate neighbor, among the three countries with the shortest men born in 1996, at about 160 cm.

What average height means for Indonesians

For Indonesians comparing themselves with the rest of the world, it helps to know that most international size charts and many growth references were built on taller populations. An Indonesian man of 170 cm is clearly tall at home. He is taller than the average 18-year-old in every province in the 2013 survey analysis, but he would be below average in Australia or the Netherlands. The height percentile calculator shows where a given height falls, and the average height by country hub lets you compare Indonesia with any other nation.

Indonesia is also a reminder that national averages are only a starting point. A country where young men in Bali and Papua differ by more than 7 cm needs regional data, and the Riskesdas program supplies it, to understand who is short and why.