Average Height in Madagascar (Men & Women)

Average height in Madagascar

Malagasy men born in 1996 reach an average adult height of 161.5 cm (5′4″), and Malagasy women 151.2 cm (5′0″), according to the NCD Risk Factor Collaboration (NCD-RisC). These are the canonical values for Madagascar on this site, in the height comparison tool and the average height by country table.

Madagascar is one of the shortest countries in the world. Of 200 countries and territories in our dataset, its men rank 197th, ahead of only Timor-Leste, Yemen and Laos, and its women rank 196th, tied with Timor-Leste and ahead of only Guatemala, the Philippines, Bangladesh and Nepal. It is the shortest country in Africa for both sexes in the 1996 cohort.

What makes Madagascar exceptional is not just that its people are short, but that they used to be taller. Malagasy women born in 1996 have gained only 1.5 cm over a century, the smallest gain for women anywhere in our data (tied with Tuvalu), and the decline since the 1950s cohort is among the steepest recorded.

How these estimates are made

NCD-RisC reports height by birth cohort. The value for 1996 is the expected average height at age 18 of people born in 1996, which lets researchers compare generations directly.

The 2016 study behind it pooled 1,472 population-based studies with measured height on more than 18.6 million people, for 200 countries and birth years from 1896 to 1996. Only measured height was used, and a statistical model weighted national surveys more heavily than local studies while borrowing information from similar countries where data were limited. The authors note that countries with few or only subnational data have wider uncertainty, which is worth bearing in mind for any single country. The series also appears as an interactive chart on Our World in Data.

A century of Malagasy height: up, then sharply down

The first half of the series looks like most countries: men gained 6.8 cm and women 5.7 cm between the 1896 and 1956 cohorts. Then the curve turns. Both sexes peaked with the 1956 cohort, and by 1996 men had lost 4.0 cm and women 4.2 cm. In our dataset, only Mauritania, Yemen and Rwanda have a larger fall from peak for men, and only Benin matches Madagascar's fall for women.

The decline erased most of a century's progress. The 1996 cohort of Malagasy women is only 1.5 cm taller than women born in 1896, and the men only 2.8 cm taller. In the same century, NCD-RisC found that South Korean women gained 20.2 cm and Iranian men 16.5 cm.

The effect on Madagascar's world ranking was severe. Malagasy women born in 1896 ranked 141st of 200; by 1996 they had fallen to 196th. Men fell from 167th to 197th.

The sub-Saharan pattern at its most extreme

The NCD-RisC paper identified a general reversal across sub-Saharan Africa: adult height decreased or stagnated for people born after the early 1960s, by up to about 5 cm from the peak in some countries. Madagascar is one of the clearest examples.

The authors discussed possible explanations for the regional pattern. Child stunting in sub-Saharan Africa rose until the mid-1990s, and that childhood adversity may have carried forward into adult height. An early African advantage over Asia, possibly based on more varied diets and lower population density, may have been eroded by population growth. And worsening economic conditions during structural adjustment may have damaged nutrition. They didn't analyse individual countries' causes, so these are regional hypotheses, but Madagascar's own survey data, below, show the childhood adversity part of the story very clearly.

Child stunting: among the highest rates anywhere

Stunting means a child is too short for their age compared with WHO growth standards, and it is closely linked to shorter adult height. Madagascar's national surveys have recorded extraordinary levels:

In 1992, three in five young Malagasy children were stunted. Until 2008–09, at least half were. The UNICEF, WHO and World Bank joint estimates, published by the World Bank, follow the same path, from 60.5 percent in 1992 to 48.9 percent in 2012, 41.6 percent in 2018 and 39.8 percent in 2021. The fall since 2008–09 is real progress, but four in ten children were still stunted in 2021.

The children stunted in the 1990s are the young adults of today, and that is the most direct explanation in the data for why the 1996 cohort is so short.

A highland problem

The 2021 survey, the Enquête Démographique et de Santé à Madagascar (EDSMD-V) carried out by the national statistics institute INSTAT with the DHS program, shows a geography that surprises many people. Stunting is highest in the central highlands around the capital, although some southern regions, such as Anosy (46.8 percent) and Androy (45.3 percent), are also very high:

Even in the capital city, 44 percent of children were stunted. Wealth matters less than in most countries: stunting was 42.8 percent among the poorest fifth of households, but still 30 percent among the richest fifth. By comparison, the richest fifth of households had stunting rates of 9.1 percent in Cameroon's 2018 survey and 7.5 percent in Ghana's 2022 survey. The survey reports these patterns without explaining them, so we won't speculate, but it's clear that stunting in Madagascar is not confined to the poor or the rural.

Short stature among adult women

The DHS surveys also measure adult women and report the share shorter than 145 cm, a threshold used to flag a higher risk of obstructed labor. Madagascar's figures are high compared with most African DHS surveys:

Unlike child stunting, this hasn't fallen, which fits the declining adult height in the NCD-RisC series. In 2021, about one woman in thirteen was under 145 cm, compared with fewer than one in a hundred in countries such as Ghana or Cameroon.

Regionally, the highest shares in 2021 were in Atsinanana and Betsiboka (12.7 percent each), Alaotra Mangoro (12.2 percent) and Itasy (12.1 percent), and the lowest in Atsimo Andrefana (2.6 percent), Boeny and Diana (2.8 percent each). Rural women were somewhat more likely to be under 145 cm (8.3 percent) than urban women (6.1 percent).

An older measured survey

Madagascar also took part in the WHO STEPS programme of surveys on noncommunicable disease risk factors. As tabulated on Wikipedia's country height list, a 2005 STEPS survey in Antananarivo Province measured 1,102 men and 1,112 women aged 25 to 64, finding averages of about 163 cm for men and 154 cm for women. Those adults were born roughly between 1941 and 1980, the period when Malagasy height was at its peak in the NCD-RisC series, so it makes sense that they were taller than the 1996 cohort, even though the survey covered the highland province where child stunting is now most common.

Young Malagasy adults today

NCD-RisC's 2020 Lancet analysis of children and adolescents provides a more recent estimate. Its country data put 19-year-old Malagasy men in 2019 at about 165.2 cm and young women at about 153.1 cm, compared with 164.0 cm and 153.3 cm in 1985.

Those numbers are higher than the 1996 cohort values in the 2016 series, which reflects the different data and models used; the two analyses shouldn't be spliced together. What they agree on is that Madagascar's young adults are among the shortest in the world: 191st of 200 for young men and 196th for young women.

Madagascar compared with the region

The Indian Ocean islands near Madagascar are much taller: Seychelles men are 12.7 cm taller, and Mauritian men 9.0 cm taller. Even compared with the mainland, Madagascar is shorter than Mozambique and Tanzania by about 3 cm for men and 3 to 5 cm for women. Malawi is the closest African match.

Globally, Madagascar's nearest peers are in Asia rather than Africa. Laos men average 160.5 cm and women 151.3 cm, almost identical to Madagascar.

Why this matters beyond the numbers

NCD-RisC's researchers study height because it is tied to health throughout life. Taller adults tend to live longer and have lower risks of heart disease, stroke and respiratory illness, while taller height also carries a higher risk of some cancers. Short stature in mothers is linked to complications in pregnancy and childbirth and to smaller babies, which is why health surveys track the share of women under 145 cm. And because differences in average height between countries come mainly from conditions in the womb and in childhood, rather than genes, the authors treat a country's height curve as a record of how well generations of children were fed and kept healthy.

Read that way, Madagascar's data carry a clear message. The cohorts born after the 1950s grew up in conditions that left them shorter than their parents, the surveys of the 1990s show that most young children were stunted, and the share of very short adult women has not fallen. The steady drop in child stunting since 2008–09 is the strongest sign that the next generation could reverse the trend, but at around 40 percent in 2021 it was still higher than in Mozambique (36.7 percent in 2022–23) and more than twice the level in Ghana (17.4 percent in 2022).

What it means

At 151.2 cm, the average Malagasy woman is just under 5 feet tall. A woman of 160 cm would be tall in Madagascar but close to average in many European countries. To see where a particular height falls, use the height percentile calculator, or convert 160 cm to feet and inches.

National averages say nothing about an individual's health. If you're concerned about a child's growth, a health worker or pediatrician can assess it using standard growth charts.