Average Height in New Zealand (Men & Women)

How tall are New Zealanders?

New Zealand men are the second tallest in Oceania, after Australians, and the country sits in the upper middle of the world rankings. In the NCD Risk Factor Collaboration (NCD-RisC) estimates for the 1996 birth cohort, New Zealand men average 177.7 cm (5′10″) and women 164.9 cm (5′5″). Men rank 30th of 200 countries and women 25th.

New Zealand's height profile is shaped by its mix of people, including New Zealand Europeans, Māori, Pacific peoples and Asian New Zealanders, and by a recent history in which children's weight has risen faster than their height. NCD-RisC's analysis of children ranks New Zealand among the countries with the least healthy changes in growth since 1985, which makes it an important case for understanding where national height is heading.

Understanding the NCD-RisC figures

NCD-RisC's 2016 study combined 1,472 population-based studies with measured height for more than 18.6 million adults in 200 countries, leaving out self-reported heights because they are biased upward. A Bayesian model estimated the average height each birth cohort reached by age 18. "Born in 1996" therefore refers to young New Zealanders who turned 18 around 2014. The national figure is an average across every group in the population; it is not a figure for any single ethnic group.

A century of change in New Zealand

New Zealand men gained 10.2 cm over the century and women 8.9 cm, close to the global gain of about 8 to 9 cm that Our World in Data reports. The big gains came early. Men added 8.7 cm between the 1896 and 1956 cohorts, and in the 1926 cohort ranked 18th in the world. Since the 1976 cohort, height has been flat: men born in 1996 are 0.1 cm shorter than those born in 1976, and women 0.1 cm taller.

The flat recent trend explains the slide in men's ranking from 18th to 30th. New Zealand didn't get shorter; other countries, especially in Europe and East Asia, kept growing after New Zealand stopped.

What the 2020 Lancet study found about New Zealand children

The clearest recent evidence on how New Zealanders grow comes from NCD-RisC's 2020 analysis in The Lancet. It pooled 2,181 population-based studies with height and weight measurements for 65 million children and adolescents aged 5 to 19 in 200 countries, and estimated trends from 1985 to 2019.

New Zealand appears in it three times, none of them flattering:

• In 2019, New Zealand was among the countries with the highest mean BMI for both boys and girls, alongside Pacific island countries, Kuwait, Bahrain, The Bahamas, Chile and the USA.
• New Zealand girls were named, with girls in South Africa, as children who started out with a healthy height or BMI at age 5 but became progressively less healthy than their peers in other countries by gaining too much weight for their height.
• Over the full 35 years, the unhealthiest changes in growth, gaining too little height, too much weight for height, or both, occurred in many sub-Saharan African countries, in New Zealand and in the USA for both boys and girls.

The study did not suggest that New Zealand children are short. Rather, it found that their height gains lagged behind other countries while their weight rose faster, the reverse of the pattern in places like Portugal, Denmark or South Korea, where children gained much more height than weight.

A school-based view, 1991–2003

A smaller study gives the same picture from inside one school. Albon, Hamlin and Ross measured height, weight and fitness in 3,306 children aged 10 to 14 at a New Zealand school up to twice a year between 1991 and 2003. Over the twelve years, boys' average weight rose by 4.5 kg and girls' by 3.9 kg, and BMI rose by about 0.12 units a year. Times in a 550-meter run worsened by 1.5% a year for boys and 1.7% for girls. The deterioration was concentrated among the heaviest and least fit children; the fittest and leanest children in 2003 looked much like their counterparts in 1991.

Ethnicity and body size in New Zealand

New Zealand's population includes New Zealand Europeans, Māori, Pacific peoples and Asian New Zealanders, and researchers have studied how body composition differs between them. Directly measured national height averages by ethnic group were not among the sources reviewed for this page, so this section reports only what the studies below found.

• A 2002 study by Rush and colleagues compared 30 young Māori, Pacific and European men with normal blood sugar. The groups did not differ significantly in height, BMI, body mass or fat mass, but European men had lower fat-free mass and a different distribution of body fat.

• A 2010 study by Wen, Rush and Plank compared adults aged 30 to 39 from five ethnic groups using whole-body scans. New Zealand Chinese participants had relatively shorter arms and legs than Asian Indian and European participants. The study's main concern was how BMI should be interpreted for different groups, since at the same BMI, Chinese and Asian Indian adults carried more body fat than Europeans.

• A 2003 study by Rush and colleagues measured 172 European, Māori and Pacific Island children aged 5 to 14 at Auckland schools, recording height and weight and estimating fat-free mass from body water. At the same BMI, Māori and Pacific girls averaged 3.7 percentage points less body fat than European girls. The team developed a single equation, using height, weight and bioimpedance, that worked for all three groups.

The general lesson from this research is that height alone says little about health; body composition at a given height varies between groups, which is why New Zealand researchers have argued for group-specific BMI cut-offs.

The gap between New Zealand men and women

The difference between New Zealand men and women in the 1996 cohort is 12.8 cm, very close to the global gap of about 12 cm that Our World in Data reports for the same generation and identical to the gap in Austria. It has changed little over the century: 11.5 cm in the 1896 cohort, 12.4 cm in 1926, 12.7 cm in 1956, 13.0 cm in 1976 and 12.8 cm in 1996. Men's and women's rankings have tracked each other closely too, always within about ten places. In that sense New Zealand's height history is unusually even: no long-running divergence between the sexes like those seen in Belgium or Croatia, and no late surge or decline, just steady growth to the 1970s cohorts followed by a long plateau.

Measuring height when standing height is difficult

New Zealand researchers have also worked on practical problems of measurement. In the SuNDiAL survey of 2019 and 2020, Ng and colleagues measured height, weight and ulna (forearm bone) length in 364 adolescents aged 15 to 18.8 and developed equations to predict height from ulna length. Predicted and measured height agreed closely, with a mean difference of zero, and predicted height classified weight status correctly 88.1% of the time. Such methods matter for people who cannot stand straight for a measurement, and they show how much depends on measuring height accurately.

Height in the New Zealand Defence Force

Military anthropometry is one of the few sources of detailed body measurements of New Zealand adults. The New Zealand Defence Force Anthropometry Survey collected 84 body measurements from 1,003 personnel, 212 women and 791 men. Kolose and colleagues used the data in 2021 to design new uniform sizing systems. Their analysis found that body height and waist girth were the most important measurements for shirts, while trousers depended on inseam length combined with hip girth for women and waist girth for men. They identified six clusters of body shape for women and ten for men, with women's clusters more varied. It is a concrete example of how average height and the spread around it shape everyday products.

New Zealand among its neighbors

New Zealand men are 1.5 cm shorter than Australian men, and women 1 cm shorter than Australian women. Compared with the United Kingdom, New Zealanders are now very slightly taller. Among Pacific nations, Tongan women average 165.5 cm, a little taller than New Zealand women, while Samoan and Fijian averages are lower. Within Oceania, New Zealand ranks second of 19 countries and territories for men and third for women, behind Australia and Tonga.

The 1896 cohort tells a different story. Then, New Zealand men (167.5 cm) were 1.4 cm shorter than Australian men, but Tongan men (170.4 cm) and Samoan men (169.1 cm) were taller than both, reflecting the NCD-RisC finding that some Pacific islands were home to some of the tallest people of that era.

New Zealand height in everyday terms

An average New Zealand man, at 177.7 cm, is about 5′10″, and an average New Zealand woman, at 164.9 cm, is about 5′5″. Both are a little below the simple average of 41 European countries in the site data (178.4 cm and 165.1 cm). Compare these heights side by side, or with your own, in the height comparison tool, and use the height percentile calculator to see where a given height ranks.

Summary

New Zealand men average 177.7 cm and women 164.9 cm, ranking 30th and 25th in the world and second in Oceania after Australia. Height rose by about 10 cm over the century but has been flat since the 1976 cohort, while the 2020 NCD-RisC analysis found New Zealand children gaining too little height and too much weight compared with peers elsewhere. Studies of ethnic groups, defence force personnel and measurement methods add detail to the national picture. For other countries, see the average height by country guide.