Average Height in Mali (Men & Women)

How tall are Malians?

Malians are among the taller populations of West Africa. The site's averages come from the NCD Risk Factor Collaboration (NCD-RisC), which estimates that people born in Mali in 1996 average 171.1 cm (5′7.5″) for men and 160.5 cm (5′3″) for women. In the site's table of 200 countries and territories, Malian men rank 100th and Malian women 79th, right around the middle of the world.

Two features stand out. First, Malian women are taller than the world average for their cohort, which Our World in Data gives as 159 cm. Second, like several of its Sahel neighbors, Mali has seen a modest decline in adult height among people born in recent decades, after a long period of growth.

Mali is also one of the few countries in the region where national surveys have published the average measured height of women, region by region. That makes it possible to check the international estimate against local data, which this article does below.

How the estimates work

Each Malian figure is a birth-cohort estimate: the average for people born in one year, at around age 18, modeled from measured heights with self-reports excluded. So the 173.3 cm for men born in 1976 describes Malians who came of age in the mid-1990s, and the 171.1 cm for the 1996 cohort describes those who turned 18 in 2014. The pooled study behind those numbers covered more than 18.6 million people worldwide.

A Bayesian hierarchical model produced each country's curve. Mali's own surveys inform its estimate, alongside data from neighboring countries and other years. Where a country has limited data, the model leans more on its region and the uncertainty is wider. Mali's Demographic and Health Surveys, which measure women's height, give its female estimates a solid base.

A century of change in Mali

Malian men gained 8.2 cm between the 1896 and 1976 cohorts and women 6.4 cm between 1896 and 1956. Then the trend turned. Men born in 1996 are 2.2 cm shorter than those born in 1976, and women born in 1996 are 2.0 cm shorter than those born in 1956. Over the full century, men gained 6.0 cm and women 4.4 cm, well below the 8 to 9 cm global gain that Our World in Data reports.

Malians were already relatively tall a century ago. Women born in 1896 averaged 156.1 cm, 2.7 cm more than British women of the same cohort (153.4 cm in the site data).

Why Mali's height stopped rising

The NCD-RisC paper reports that in many sub-Saharan African countries, adult height decreased or at best stayed the same for cohorts born after the early 1960s. It notes that childhood stunting rose in the region until the mid-1990s, and suggests that this adversity carried forward into adult height.

The authors also suggest why Africa started with an advantage over Asia: a more diverse diet than the cereal-and-vegetable diets common in Asia, helped by lower population density. Rising population and worsening economic conditions during structural adjustment may have eroded that advantage. These are regional explanations, not a diagnosis for Mali specifically, but they match Mali's curve closely: early gains, a peak for people born around the 1960s and 1970s, and decline afterwards.

What Mali's national surveys show

Mali's Demographic and Health Surveys (EDSM) are run by the national statistics and health planning offices with technical support from the DHS Program. They measure young children and women aged 15 to 49.

Women's height in 2006

The 2006 survey is especially valuable because it reported the average measured height of women: 161.0 cm for women aged 15 to 49. The survey report notes that this is above the 140 to 150 cm range generally used as the threshold for obstetric risk, and that only 0.8% of women were shorter than 145 cm.

The regional breakdown shows how evenly height is spread across the country:

The gap between the tallest region (Kayes) and the shortest (Mopti) is 2.6 cm. Urban women averaged 161.7 cm and rural women 160.7 cm. The report singles out Mopti and Sikasso as the regions where short stature, though still rare, was most common. (The survey notes that Kidal's figures rest on only 256 unweighted cases.)

Age, schooling and wealth

The same 2006 table breaks women's height down by age, education and household wealth. Women aged 20 to 49 all averaged between 161.3 and 161.5 cm, while those aged 15 to 19 averaged 159.6 cm, and 2.4% of them were under 145 cm; the youngest group includes teenagers who may not have finished growing. Women with secondary education or more averaged 162.5 cm, against 161.4 cm for women with primary schooling and 160.8 cm for women with no schooling. The three poorest wealth quintiles averaged 160.5 to 160.6 cm, and the richest 162.0 cm. These differences of one to two centimeters are small next to the gaps between countries, but they follow the usual pattern in which better-off groups are slightly taller.

How the DHS compares with NCD-RisC

The women measured in 2006 were born between about 1957 and 1991. NCD-RisC estimates women born in 1956 at 162.5 cm, in 1976 at 162.0 cm and in 1996 at 160.5 cm. The DHS average of 161.0 cm sits comfortably within that range, which is reassuring: the international estimate and the national measurement tell the same story.

How the 2018 survey measured height

The 2018 report describes the field method in some detail, which helps explain why DHS heights are trusted. Interviewers were trained to measure children under five and women aged 15 to 49, and the training for measuring children included standardization tests. Children under two were measured lying down, which gives their length, while older children and adults were measured standing. Height and length were taken on a graduated ShorrBoard measuring board, and weight on SECA electronic scales with a digital display.

Of 9,910 children under five identified for measurement, valid height-for-age data were obtained for 91% and valid weight-for-height data for 96%.

Women and children in 2018

The 2018 survey found that only 0.4% of women aged 15 to 49 were shorter than 145 cm, with 0.1% in towns and 0.4% in rural areas. Women's weight has changed more than their height. One woman in ten (10%) was thin, with a body mass index below 18.5, while 28% were overweight or obese, including 9% who were obese. In Bamako, 46% of women were overweight or obese.

For children, the 2018 survey found that 27% of children under five were stunted, 9% were wasted, 19% were underweight and 2% were overweight. Stunting, defined as height for age more than two standard deviations below the WHO growth standard, is the measure most closely tied to future adult height.

Stunting over three decades

The World Bank's series for Mali tracks child stunting since the late 1980s:

The rise between 1987 and 2001 lines up with the NCD-RisC paper's description of increasing child stunting in sub-Saharan Africa into the 1990s, and with the decline in adult height for Malians born in that period. Since the early 2000s stunting has fallen back to roughly a quarter of children, about where it was in the late 1980s.

Height steady, weight rising

Comparing the 2006 and 2018 surveys shows how differently height and weight have moved among Malian women. Height barely changed: the share of women under 145 cm went from 0.8% to 0.4%. Weight changed a lot:

In twelve years, the share of women who were overweight or obese rose by about ten percentage points nationally and doubled in rural areas. Adult height reflects conditions decades earlier, during childhood, while weight responds to diet and activity much faster, so the two indicators can move in very different directions in the same population.

Mali and its neighbors

NCD-RisC estimates for Mali and the surrounding countries (1996 birth cohort):

Only Senegal, to the west, is taller. Malian men are about 2 cm taller than Burkinabè men and 3.4 cm taller than men in Niger, and nearly 8 cm taller than men in Mauritania. Among women, Mali and Burkina Faso are almost level.

Several of these neighbors share Mali's pattern of decline. Senegal's men peaked at 175.4 cm in the 1976 cohort and have lost 2.3 cm since; Côte d'Ivoire's men have lost 3.4 cm since that cohort. Mali's decline is moderate by comparison.

The gap between Malian men and women

Malian men born in 1996 are 10.6 cm taller than Malian women, compared with a gap of about 12 cm worldwide. The gap has stayed in a narrow band across the century, from 9.0 cm in the 1896 cohort to 11.3 cm in the 1976 cohort, before narrowing again. Because men's height fell after the 1976 cohort and women's after the 1956 cohort, the two declines have been roughly parallel.

Using these figures

An average Malian man born in 1996 is 171.1 cm, about 5′7.5″, very close to the global male average of 171 cm. An average woman, at 160.5 cm, is about 5′3″. To see how an individual height compares with these averages, try the height percentile calculator, or convert with the height converter. The average height hub has every country's figures.

Mali's height record shows a population that was tall by world standards early on, grew taller through the middle of the twentieth century, and then lost a little ground as childhood conditions worsened in the 1980s and 1990s. The recent fall in child stunting, from over 40% around 2001 to about a quarter today, gives some reason to expect that the decline will stop in younger generations, though no adult estimate covers them yet.