Average Height in Myanmar (Men & Women)

Average height in Myanmar

Men in Myanmar born in 1996 average 164.7 cm (5′5″) and women 154.4 cm (5′0½″), according to estimates from the NCD Risk Factor Collaboration (NCD-RisC) that this site uses for every country. Myanmar ranks 181st of 200 countries for men and 175th for women, among the shorter populations in Southeast Asia.

Myanmar's height history has two chapters. In the first half of the 20th century, average height rose substantially. In the second half, it barely moved. This guide explains the estimates and what "birth cohort" means, traces that century of change, looks at what Myanmar's first Demographic and Health Survey found about women's stature and children's growth, and compares Myanmar with its neighbors.

Where the estimates come from

NCD-RisC published its global study of adult height in eLife in 2016. The researchers pooled 1,472 population-based data sources with measured height for more than 18.6 million adults, and estimated average height at age 18 for people born each year from 1896 to 1996 in 200 countries and territories. They excluded self-reported heights because people tend to overstate them.

Each figure describes a birth cohort: the 164.7 cm headline refers to men born in 1996, measured as young adults. The study notes that only 72 countries had any data for people born in 1920 or earlier, so for many countries, including Myanmar, the earliest values depend heavily on the statistical model and should be read as rough estimates.

A century in two halves

Between the 1896 and 1956 cohorts, men gained 6.4 cm and women 8.1 cm. Women's faster growth narrowed the gap between the sexes from 11.7 cm to 10.0 cm. Then progress almost stopped. Over the next 40 years of birth cohorts, men gained just 1.0 cm and women 0.7 cm.

Over the full century, men gained 7.4 cm and women 8.8 cm, smaller increases than in many Asian countries. For comparison, the site data show South Korean women gaining about 20 cm over the same period and Thai men 10.7 cm.

Our World in Data describes average height as a marker of how well children were fed and how healthy they were while growing up, noting that most stunting happens in the first two years of life. A long plateau like Myanmar's suggests that for children born from the late 1950s through the 1990s, conditions for growth improved little on average. The sources reviewed here don't analyze Myanmar's plateau specifically, so this guide doesn't attribute it to a particular cause.

Myanmar's first Demographic and Health Survey

The most detailed recent national data come from the 2015-16 Myanmar Demographic and Health Survey (MDHS), implemented by the Ministry of Health and Sports with technical assistance from ICF through the international DHS Program. The report describes it as the first survey of its kind in Myanmar. It covered women and men aged 15 to 49 in randomly selected households across the country, and measured the height and weight of 98% of the women interviewed.

The DHS reports height mainly through one indicator: the share of women shorter than 145 cm (about 4′9″), described in the report as short stature. Nationally, 6.4% of women aged 15 to 49 were below that threshold.

Short stature by state and region

The range is wide. In Chin State, one woman in seven was shorter than 145 cm, almost five times the share in Yangon Region, which had the lowest rate. Shan and Kachin states follow Chin, while Yangon, Tanintharyi, Sagaing and Bago are at the low end.

Short stature by residence, education and wealth

The same table shows strong social gradients:

Women with no schooling were almost four times as likely to be under 145 cm as women with more than secondary education. Women in the poorest fifth of households were two and a half times as likely as those in the richest fifth. Because adult height is largely set in childhood, these differences most likely reflect the conditions these women grew up in, not just their circumstances as adults.

By age, the share was similar for every group from 15 to 49, between 6.1% and 6.9%. That fits the NCD-RisC finding that women's average height changed little for cohorts born from the 1960s to the 1990s.

Weight and body size

The survey also measured body mass index. The average BMI for women aged 15 to 49 was 22.5. Sixteen percent of women were thin (BMI below 18.5), 60% had a normal BMI, and 25% were overweight or obese, including 6% who were obese. Overweight or obesity was more common in urban areas (33%) than rural areas (21%).

Children's growth: the outlook

Child stunting, low height for age, is the clearest early signal of how tall the next generation of adults will be. The MDHS found that 29% of children under 5 were stunted, including 8% severely stunted. The report notes this was an improvement on the 2009-10 Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey, which found 35% stunted.

Stunting rose with age, peaking among children aged 24 to 35 months, and fell with higher maternal education and household wealth. Chin State had the highest stunting rate, 41%, matching its high share of short-statured women. Rakhine State had the worst overall child nutrition in the country, with 38% of children stunted, 14% wasted and 34% underweight.

The longer World Bank series shows how much has changed:

In the early and mid-1990s, more than half of young children in Myanmar were stunted. Those children were born in the late 1980s and 1990s, the same generation as the NCD-RisC 1996 cohort, which helps explain why that cohort is barely taller than its parents. By 2018, the rate had fallen to about a quarter. If that improvement continues, Myanmar's children born in the 2010s may grow up noticeably taller than today's young adults. This site's data stop with people born in 1996, so the change isn't visible in the headline numbers yet.

Myanmar and its neighbors

Myanmar sits close to India and Vietnam for men, within 0.3 cm, and ahead of Bangladesh, Cambodia and Laos. Myanmar women are taller than women in India, Bangladesh, Cambodia and Laos, by between 1.5 cm and 3.6 cm.

The biggest gaps are with Thailand and China. Myanmar men are 4.5 cm shorter than Thai men and 7.1 cm shorter than Chinese men. A century ago the gap with Thailand was much smaller: in the NCD-RisC series, Thai men born in 1896 averaged 158.5 cm, 1.2 cm taller than Myanmar men of that cohort. As recently as the 1956 cohort, the difference was just 0.8 cm. Thailand kept growing through the second half of the century; Myanmar largely did not. The NCD-RisC paper notes that height in China and Thailand was still rising in the most recent cohorts.

Who stalled and who kept growing

The plateau after the 1950s cohorts is not unique to Myanmar. Several of its neighbors show the same pattern, while two did not:

In other words, Myanmar's recent record is typical of much of South and Southeast Asia in the NCD-RisC estimates. What stands out is the divergence from Thailand and China, which kept adding several centimeters over the same four decades. Men born in Myanmar, Thailand and India in 1956 were all within about one centimeter of each other; by 1996, Thai men had pulled 4.5 cm ahead of the other two.

How the DHS measures height

The MDHS report notes that height and weight were obtained for 98% of women aged 15 to 49 who were interviewed. The body mass index results exclude women who were pregnant or had given birth in the two months before the survey, while the short-stature indicator is reported for all measured women.

Two features of the DHS data are worth keeping in mind. First, the survey reports a threshold, the share below 145 cm, rather than a mean height, so it shows how many women are very short rather than how tall the average woman is. Second, it covers women of reproductive age, 15 to 49, which in 2015-16 meant women born between about 1966 and 2001. Its results describe roughly the same generations as the last two NCD-RisC cohorts, and the two sources agree that women's height changed little over that period.

Because DHS surveys use the same indicator worldwide, the 145 cm share also allows rough comparisons with other countries. Myanmar's 6.4% is far above the 1.4% recorded among Ugandan women in 2016 and the 3.5% among Colombian women in 2010, and a little below the 7.2% recorded in Yemen in 2013. Uganda's women are, on average, only about 2 cm taller than Myanmar's in the NCD-RisC estimates, so the difference in very short stature is larger than the difference in averages would suggest, a sign that the spread of heights, not just the average, differs between populations.

Practical context

An average man in Myanmar born in 1996 stands about 5′5″, close to the 165 cm page, and an average woman about 5′0½″. Older adults are only slightly shorter, because the averages changed so little for people born after the mid-1950s.

To see how your height compares with men or women in Myanmar born in 1996, use the height percentile calculator. For the full ranking of 200 countries, see the average height hub.