Average Height in Portugal (Men & Women)

Average height in Portugal today

Portuguese men born in 1996 average 172.9 cm (5′8″) and Portuguese women 163.0 cm (5′4″), according to the NCD Risk Factor Collaboration (NCD-RisC). Those are the figures used across this site. Out of 200 countries and territories, Portuguese men rank 75th and Portuguese women 49th.

Within Europe, the picture is sharper. Of the 41 European countries in the dataset, Portugal has the shortest men and ranks 35th for women. That is not a new observation: economic historians have spent years asking how a country in Western Europe came to sit at the bottom of the continent's height table. This page looks at the data, the history behind it, and what measured surveys of Portuguese adults show.

The gap between men and women, about 10 cm, is one of the narrower ones in Europe. A Portuguese man of average height is almost exactly 173 cm, or just over 5′8″.

Where these numbers come from

NCD-RisC is a global network of health scientists. Its 2016 height study in eLife combined 1,472 population-based data sources with measurements from more than 18.6 million people born between 1896 and 1996. A Bayesian model then estimated mean height at age 18 for every country and every birth cohort, the group of people born in a given year.

The cohort approach links each figure to the conditions of childhood. As Our World in Data puts it, height is shaped above all by nutrition and illness while a person is growing, which is why it is often used as a proxy for living standards when other records are thin. The "1996" figure therefore describes Portuguese people who grew up in the late 1990s and 2000s, not the whole adult population, which includes many older and shorter people.

A century of growth from a low base

Portugal's century of change was large in absolute terms. Men born in 1996 are 14.0 cm taller than those born in 1896, the 8th largest gain for men among 200 countries. Women gained 12.6 cm, which ranks 24th.

The steepest rise came in cohorts born between the 1910s and 1970s, when men gained roughly 1.8 to 1.9 cm per decade. After 1976 the curve flattens but does not stop. Unlike many wealthy countries, where height has stalled or even slipped in recent cohorts, Portuguese men and women both reach their highest estimated averages with the most recent cohort in the NCD-RisC series.

The trouble is the starting point. A Portuguese man born in 1896 averaged 159.0 cm, more than 3 cm shorter than a Spanish man of the same year (162.3 cm) and over 7 cm shorter than a French man (166.4 cm). Even after one of the largest gains in the world, Portugal has not closed those gaps.

Milestones and a Southern European paradox

The year-by-year NCD-RisC data make it possible to date some milestones. Portuguese men first averaged 165 cm with the cohort born in 1935, and 170 cm with the cohort born in 1962. Portuguese women first averaged 160 cm with the cohort born in 1959. A Portuguese woman born in 1996 (163.0 cm) is taller than a Portuguese man born in 1916 (161.5 cm), a measure of how much childhood conditions changed in eighty years.

Here is the paradox. Portugal's gain over the century is larger than that of most of its neighbors:

Yet the ranking barely changed. In the 1896 cohort, Portuguese men were already the shortest of the 41 European countries in the dataset, at 159.0 cm, about 3 cm behind Malta, Spain and Greece. A hundred years later they are still last. Portuguese women have done better in relative terms: they ranked 37th of 41 in 1896 and 35th in 1996, and they gained slightly more than Spanish women.

The lesson is that a large gain is not enough to change position if neighbors are growing just as fast. Spain and Greece started from almost the same level as each other, about 3 cm above Portugal, and grew at a similar pace, so the Portuguese gap for men persisted. The Greek case is useful by contrast: Greek men also began in the lower group in 1896, 3.5 cm above Portuguese men, gained slightly more, and now rank 30th of 41 rather than near the bottom. Small differences in the pace of growth, sustained for a century, add up to large differences in rank.

Why Portugal fell behind: the historical evidence

The most detailed answer comes from a 2013 article in the Economic History Review by Yvonne Stolz, Joerg Baten and Jaime Reis. Its abstract opens with a blunt question: "When and why did the Portuguese become the shortest Europeans?"

The authors traced Portuguese living standards from the 1720s to the late 20th century using historical height records. Their main findings, as summarized in the abstract:

• In the early 19th century, average height in Portugal was not significantly different from height in most other European countries.
• Around 1850, when heights across Europe began to climb sharply, Portuguese heights did not follow.
• In a panel analysis of 12 countries, the main factor holding back the Portuguese "biological standard of living" was a delay in human-capital formation, essentially slower growth in schooling and skills.

That last point matters because it shifts the explanation away from genetics. Portugal did not start the modern era as an unusually short population; it became one when it missed the early stage of Europe's height boom. The NCD-RisC estimates pick up the story at the end of the 19th century, when the gap was already in place.

Recent measured surveys

NCD-RisC is a model built on many sources. It is worth checking it against direct measurements, and several Portuguese studies are compiled on the Portuguese-language Wikipedia page Estatura. They are drawn from different samples and are not all nationally representative, but together they bracket the national estimates well:

The adult figures for 2014, 173.7 cm and 163.7 cm, sit within a centimeter of the NCD-RisC estimates for recent cohorts. The working-population study reports noticeably shorter women, which is what you would expect from a sample that includes people up to age 65, born when Portuguese women were several centimeters shorter.

Children and teenagers

A second NCD-RisC study, published in The Lancet in 2020, modelled the height and body-mass index of school-aged children and adolescents from 1985 to 2019. The paper groups Portugal with other European countries where boys gained moderate-to-large amounts of height over that period with small or no increases in BMI. In other words, young Portuguese have been getting taller without the sharp weight gain seen in some other countries. That fits the adult data, in which the most recent cohorts are still the tallest.

Portugal compared with Spain, Europe and the Lusophone world

Using the same NCD-RisC data for the 1996 cohort:

The Spanish gap

Spain is the obvious comparison, and it is striking that the gap for men has hardly moved in a century. Spanish men were 3.3 cm taller than Portuguese men in the 1896 cohort and 3.7 cm taller in the 1996 cohort. For women the story is different: the gap has almost closed, and Spanish women born in 1996 are only 0.4 cm taller than Portuguese women. This is why Portugal ranks much higher for women than for men on the European table.

Other Portuguese-speaking countries

Among Portuguese-speaking countries, Brazilian men are slightly taller than Portuguese men (by 0.7 cm), while Portuguese women are 2.1 cm taller than Brazilian women. Men in Cape Verde are about level with Portuguese men. Angola and Mozambique are considerably shorter, reflecting very different economic histories. Across the Mediterranean, Moroccan men average 2.5 cm less than Portuguese men.

For the full list, see average height by country.

Famous comparisons

National averages are easier to grasp next to familiar people. Portugal's best-known athlete, Cristiano Ronaldo, is listed on this site at 185 cm, about 12 cm above the average Portuguese man born in 1996, and would stand out in most Portuguese crowds. You can line him up against an average-height Portuguese man, or anyone else, with the height comparison tool.

Using the averages sensibly

A few points help when you apply these numbers:

1. Cohort, not population. The 172.9 cm figure describes men born in 1996. Older Portuguese adults are, on average, shorter.
2. Measured beats reported. Many surveys simply ask people their height. One of the Portuguese studies in the table above was designed to compare measured with self-reported values, and measured data are the safer basis for comparisons.
3. Spread matters. Averages hide wide variation. To see how common a given height is, use the height percentile calculator.
4. Not a health target. A child's growth should be judged by a doctor against growth charts, not against national averages.

Key takeaways

• Portuguese men born in 1996 average 172.9 cm and women 163.0 cm (NCD-RisC), ranking 75th and 49th of 200.
• Portuguese men are the shortest of 41 European countries in the dataset, while women rank 35th.
• Men gained 14.0 cm over the century, the 8th largest gain in the world, and both sexes are still slowly getting taller.
• Historians link Portugal's lag to its failure to join Europe's height boom after 1850, driven mainly by slow growth in schooling.
• Measured surveys of Portuguese adults land close to the NCD-RisC estimates.