Average Height in Italy (Men & Women)

Average height in Italy

Italian adults born in 1996 average 177.8 cm (5′10″) for men and 164.6 cm (5′5″) for women, according to the NCD Risk Factor Collaboration (NCD-RisC). Those are the figures used on this page and across the site. Italian men rank around 29th of 200 countries and Italian women around 32nd, both in the top sixth of the world.

That's a big change from a century ago, when Italian men born in 1896 ranked around 57th and women around 56th. Italy's rise is one of the clearest examples in Europe of how heights respond to improving nutrition and health, and its own national health examination surveys add a measured, up-to-date picture.

How the NCD-RisC estimates work

NCD-RisC reanalyzed 1,472 population-based studies with measured heights for more than 18.6 million people in 200 countries. According to the CUORE Project team, the collaboration's analyses drew on 46 Italian surveys at community, regional and national level, including the CUORE surveys of 1998–2002 and 2008–2012. Italian collaborators included researchers from the Istituto Superiore di Sanità and universities in Bologna, Turin and Palermo, among others.

Only measured heights were used. The model estimates average height for each birth year from 1896 to 1996, adjusting for height lost with age, so the 1996 figure describes Italians who turned 18 around 2014.

A century of growth

The rise was gradual at first. Men gained 3.2 cm between the 1896 and 1926 cohorts. It then sped up: 5 cm between 1926 and 1956, and 3.6 cm more by 1976. Women followed a similar path.

Unlike in Britain or the United States, Italian heights hadn't stopped rising by the end of the series. Men born in 1996 were 1.3 cm taller than those born in 1976, and women 1.9 cm taller. In the year-by-year series published by Our World in Data, both sexes were at their tallest in the final 1996 cohort.

Italian women's late gains are worth noting. Between the 1976 and 1996 cohorts they gained more than Italian men did, and more than women in France (0.5 cm) or Germany, where women's heights slightly fell.

Three centuries of Italian 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 Italy the series starts in the 1730s.

The series shows a long decline. Men born in the 1740s, at about 168 cm, were taller than any Italian generation until those born in the 1940s. From there, heights drifted down for a century, reaching a low of about 162 cm for men born in the 1840s.

Recovery was slow. Men born in the 1870s were only 1.5 cm taller than the 1840s low. Gains then accelerated in the 20th century: about 2.5 cm between the 1900s and 1930s birth decades, and more than 3 cm between the 1930s and 1950s. Men born in the 1980s were about 12.5 cm taller than those born in the 1840s.

The NCD-RisC paper notes that men's heights in Europe have been reconstructed over periods of up to 250 years from records of conscripts, soldiers and convicts.

The CUORE Project: measured heights today

The most detailed recent measurements of Italian adults come from the CUORE Project, a series of national health examination surveys run by the Istituto Superiore di Sanità (ISS). Its results are published through the ISS's CuoreData platform. A 2022 paper in PLOS ONE by Chiara Donfrancesco and colleagues compared three rounds:

• 1998–2002: a random sample of 100 men and 100 women aged 35–74 for every 1.5 million inhabitants, in all Italian regions (50 percent participation).
• 2008–2012: 110 men and 110 women aged 35–79 for every 1.5 million residents, in all regions (53 percent participation).
• 2018–2019: 100 men and 100 women aged 35–74 in each of 10 regions across northern, central and southern Italy (40 percent participation).

To compare like with like, the paper analyzed only residents aged 35–74 in the ten regions covered by all three rounds: Piedmont, Lombardy, Liguria, Emilia-Romagna, Tuscany, Lazio, Abruzzo, Basilicata, Calabria and Sicily.

How heights were measured

Participants were measured in their underwear with a height ruler. Heights were recorded in centimeters with one decimal, either 0 or 5, so to the nearest half centimeter. Weight was measured on an electronic scale in the first survey and on a balance-beam scale in the second and third. Because everything was measured, the CUORE figures avoid the bias of self-reported data. The authors note that many people overestimate their height when asked, which leads self-report studies to underestimate overweight and obesity.

Results

Men's average height rose by 2.0 cm over two decades and women's by about 1 cm. For men, the increase was largest in the 45–64 age group, at about 2 percent. Because these are adults aged 35 to 74, the change likely reflects younger, taller generations replacing older ones in the sample.

The paper also found that, within each period:

• Men were 8 percent taller than women in 1998 and 9 percent taller in 2008 and 2018. In centimeters, the age-adjusted gap grew from 13.1 cm to 13.8 cm and then 14.2 cm.
• Height decreased progressively with each older age group.
• Height was directly associated with educational level, which the researchers used as a proxy for socioeconomic status.

Do the two sources agree?

At first glance, the CUORE average for men in 2018–2019 (173.2 cm) looks far below the NCD-RisC figure of 177.8 cm. But the two describe different people. The CUORE sample covered adults aged 35 to 74, born roughly between 1944 and 1984. NCD-RisC's 177.8 cm is for a single cohort born in 1996.

The year-by-year NCD-RisC series published by Our World in Data makes a fairer check possible. It puts Italian men born in 1944 at about 170.4 cm, those born in 1964 at about 174.6 cm and those born in 1984 at about 177.2 cm. A sample spread across those birth years, with more weight on the middle-aged, should average somewhere in the low-to-mid 170s, which is where CUORE's 173.2 cm lands. For women, the NCD-RisC series runs from about 158.5 cm (born 1944) to about 163.5 cm (born 1984), and CUORE's 159.0 cm sits at the lower end, as you'd expect given that the CUORE averages are age-adjusted to the Italian population aged 35–74 rather than weighted toward younger adults.

The two sources use different methods, so they won't match exactly. But a measured national survey landing inside the range implied by the model is a reassuring sign that both are describing the same population.

Weight alongside height

The same surveys tracked body mass index. Men's mean BMI was 26.7 in 1998, 27.5 in 2008 and 27.0 in 2018. Women's was 26.2, 26.6 and 26.3. The authors describe the trend in excess weight as substantially stable over two decades, but they note that a high proportion of adults remain overweight or obese, and that the problem is more severe among people with less education.

Men and women in Italy

The height gap between Italian men and women widened through the middle of the century and has narrowed slightly since.

Men pulled ahead between the 1926 and 1956 cohorts, gaining 5 cm while women gained 3.1 cm. Then women caught up a little, gaining 1.9 cm between 1976 and 1996 against 1.3 cm for men. The CUORE surveys show a similar relationship among measured adults: men were 8 to 9 percent taller than women in every round.

Italy among the southern European countries

Italy started the 20th century taller than most of its Mediterranean neighbors, and it has stayed ahead of most of them.

Greek men overtook Italian men for the cohorts born in the mid-20th century, then fell slightly behind again by 1996 as Greek heights leveled off. Spanish and Portuguese men gained more than Italian men over the century but started further back, so they remain shorter. Portuguese men born in 1996 are 4.9 cm shorter than Italian men, only a little less than the 5.7 cm gap in 1896.

Italy compared with its neighbors

Italian men are 2 to 3 cm shorter than men in Croatia, Slovenia and France, and slightly taller than men in Austria, Greece and Spain. Italian women are level with Austrian women and about 1 cm taller than Swiss and Spanish women.

Italy also closed much of its historical gap with northern neighbors. Swiss men born in 1896 were 2.8 cm taller than Italian men. By the 1996 cohort the gap was 0.6 cm.

Italian heights in practice

A young Italian man is typically about 178 cm (5′10″) and a young Italian woman about 165 cm (5′5″). The 165 cm page covers the female average in the same way. Middle-aged and older Italians, as the CUORE surveys show, are several centimeters shorter on average than people in their twenties. The 178 cm page shows that height in feet and inches with comparisons from around the world. To see where any height falls, try the height percentile calculator.