Average Height in Kazakhstan (Men & Women)

How tall are people in Kazakhstan?

The site's figures for Kazakhstan come from the NCD Risk Factor Collaboration (NCD-RisC), which estimates that people born there in 1996 average 171.1 cm (5′7.5″) for men and 159.6 cm (5′3″) for women. In the site's table of 200 countries and territories, Kazakh men rank 99th and Kazakh women 89th, both close to the middle of the world and close to the global averages for their cohort.

Kazakhstan's height history has three phases: rapid growth in the first half of the twentieth century, a slowdown after the 1950s, and a slight dip among people born in the 1980s and 1990s. That last pattern is one the NCD-RisC paper describes in neighboring Central Asian countries.

Kazakhstan also has an unusually detailed snapshot of women's height from its 1999 Demographic and Health Survey, broken down by age, region, urban or rural residence, education and ethnic group. Those figures match the international estimate closely and add local detail it can't provide.

How the NCD-RisC estimates work

Kazakhstan's figures are birth-cohort estimates from measured data, with self-reported heights excluded: each one is the modeled average at about age 18 for everyone born in that year. Men born in 1896 averaged 161.2 cm and men born in 1976 reached 171.8 cm, the series' peak. The 1996 cohort, which turned 18 around 2014, averages 171.1 cm, slightly below that peak.

A Bayesian hierarchical model combined each country's own data with information from other years and from other countries in its region, borrowing more from the region where national data were scarce. Kazakhstan was also one of 62 countries the authors used to compare height gains with adult mortality, chosen because their death registration was more than 80% complete.

A century of change

Between the 1896 and 1926 cohorts, Kazakh men gained 5.2 cm and women 4.7 cm, among the faster gains of that era. Another 4.1 cm for men and 3.8 cm for women followed by the 1956 cohort. After that, growth slowed to just over a centimeter by 1976, and then turned slightly negative: men born in 1996 are 0.7 cm shorter than those born in 1976, and women 0.6 cm shorter.

Over the full century, men gained 9.9 cm and women 8.5 cm, in line with the 8 to 9 cm global average Our World in Data reports. The difference is in the timing. Almost all of Kazakhstan's growth came in the first sixty years. Women born in 1996 are exactly as tall as women born in 1956.

A Central Asian pattern

The NCD-RisC paper notes that in some countries of Central Asia, with Azerbaijan and Uzbekistan as examples, adult height recently declined for men but not for women. Kazakhstan's dip is small and affects both sexes about equally, but it belongs to the same regional slowdown. Neighboring Uzbekistan shows a larger fall for men, from 170.8 cm in the 1976 cohort to 169.4 cm in the 1996 cohort, and for women, from 159.2 cm to 157.8 cm.

Our World in Data explains why such changes matter: within a population most variation in height is genetic, but changes across generations mainly reflect nutrition and health during childhood and adolescence. Kazakhstan's 1996 cohort grew up through the 1990s, and the child-growth data below show that stunting was more common then than in later surveys.

What the 1999 national survey measured

The 1999 Kazakhstan Demographic and Health Survey (KDHS), the country's second national DHS, measured height and weight for women aged 15 to 49 and for children under five. It found an average height of 159.6 cm for women (standard deviation 6.0 cm), with only 0.5% shorter than 145 cm, the threshold the report uses for higher obstetric risk. The report explains that maternal height can help predict the risk of a difficult delivery, because small stature is often associated with a small pelvis, and that women shorter than about 140 to 150 cm can be considered at risk.

The survey average matches the NCD-RisC estimates almost exactly. The women measured in 1999 were born between about 1950 and 1984, cohorts that NCD-RisC estimates at 159.6 to 160.2 cm.

Women's height by age

The oldest group, born between about 1950 and 1964, was the shortest, and women in their twenties and early thirties were the tallest. That fits the NCD-RisC picture of heights peaking for people born in the 1960s and 1970s. The youngest group, aged 15 to 19, includes teenagers who may still have been growing.

Region and residence

Women in the Central region were the tallest, 3.3 cm taller on average than women in the South. Urban women were 1.7 cm taller than rural women, and the share of women under 145 cm was 0.2% in towns against 0.9% in rural areas.

Education and ethnic group

Height rose with schooling: women with primary or general secondary education averaged 158.7 cm, those with specialized secondary education 159.8 cm, and those with higher education 161.0 cm.

The survey also reported averages by ethnic group. Ethnic Kazakh women averaged 158.5 cm, ethnic Russian women 161.5 cm, and women of other groups 159.7 cm. These are averages for large, varied groups. Differences like this can reflect a mix of ancestry, region of residence, urban or rural life and living standards, and the survey doesn't separate those influences. They also underline why the NCD-RisC national figure is a blend of populations with different averages.

Child growth and stunting

Stunting, a height for age more than two standard deviations below the WHO growth standard, is the child-growth indicator most closely tied to adult height.

The 1999 KDHS found that about 10% of children under five were moderately or severely stunted, 2% were wasted and 4% were underweight. Stunting was somewhat more common among girls than boys (11% against 9%), while boys were more likely to be wasted, and children aged 12 to 23 months and 36 to 47 months were less well nourished than infants on almost all measures. The anthropometric results were based on 612 children with complete and plausible measurements.

The World Bank's series of stunting estimates gives somewhat different values for overlapping years:

The trend is clearly downward: by 2015, fewer than one child in ten was stunted, less than half the 1995 level.

A regional study in Kzyl-Orda

National averages can hide pockets of poor nutrition. A study published in the European Journal of Clinical Nutrition in 2002 by Alan Dangour and colleagues measured 2,024 children aged 6 to 59 months, born to 1,501 randomly selected mothers, in the Kazalinsk, Djalagash and Zhanakorgan districts of Kzyl-Orda region. The authors found that both stunting and anemia were considerable, at levels similar to those of other Central Asian children, and concluded that Central Asia was a region where childhood nutritional status gave cause for concern.

Kazakhstan and its neighbors

NCD-RisC estimates for Kazakhstan and nearby countries (1996 birth cohort):

Kazakhstan sits in a tight cluster with Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, China and Turkmenistan, all within about a centimeter for men. Russia, to the north, is in a different league: Russian men are 5.4 cm taller and Russian women 5.7 cm taller. Uzbekistan, to the south, is about 2 cm shorter for both sexes.

Kazakhstan and Russia over a century

The comparison with Russia shows how the gap between neighbors can open, close and reopen:

For men, the gap narrowed from 5.8 cm in the 1896 cohort to 2.7 cm in the 1926 cohort, as Kazakh heights rose quickly. It then widened again, to 5.4 cm by 1996, because Russian men kept growing after the 1950s while Kazakh men largely stopped. For women the change is starker: a gap of 2.5 to 2.7 cm held steady from 1896 to 1956, then more than doubled to 5.7 cm, as Russian women gained 3.0 cm after 1956 and Kazakh women gained nothing.

Men, women and the gap between them

Kazakh men born in 1996 are 11.5 cm taller than Kazakh women, close to the global gap of about 12 cm implied by Our World in Data's averages. The gap widened slowly over the century, from 10.1 cm in the 1896 cohort to 11.6 cm in the 1976 cohort, because men gained a little more than women at each step. In the most recent cohorts, both sexes dipped by almost the same amount, so the gap held steady.

Putting the averages to use

An average Kazakh man born in 1996 stands 171.1 cm, about 5′7.5″, essentially the same as the global male average of 171 cm reported by Our World in Data. An average Kazakh woman, at 159.6 cm, is about 5′3″, very close to the global female average of 159 cm. In that sense, Kazakhstan is about as "average" as a country gets.

To compare an individual height with these figures, use the height percentile calculator, convert on the cm to feet page for 170 cm, or compare with other countries on the average height hub.

Kazakhstan's height record shows fast early growth, a long plateau and a slight recent dip, alongside steady progress against child stunting. If the fall in stunting since the 1990s carries through, the cohorts born after 1996 may resume growing, but that will only be confirmed when they're measured as adults.