Average Height in Saudi Arabia (Men & Women)

How tall are Saudis?

Saudi men born in 1996 reach an average adult height of 167.7 cm (5′6″), and Saudi women 155.9 cm (5′1″), according to the NCD Risk Factor Collaboration (NCD-RisC). These are the reference figures for Saudi Arabia on this site, used in the height comparison tool and in the average height by country table.

Among the 200 countries and territories in our dataset, Saudi men rank 144th and Saudi women 159th. The difference between men and women, 11.8 cm, is close to the global average of about 12 cm. Within the Gulf, those figures put Saudis on the shorter side, behind Kuwait, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.

Saudi Arabia is a country where the available sources disagree more than usual, and that disagreement is itself informative. This page sets out what each source says and why they differ.

Understanding birth-cohort estimates

NCD-RisC presents height by year of birth. The 1996 figure is the expected height at age 18 of people born that year, not the average of all adults in the country. This lets researchers compare generations fairly: a survey of all adults would mix people born in the 1940s, who grew up in very different conditions, with those born in the 1990s.

The collaboration's 2016 study combined 1,472 population-based studies with measured height on more than 18.6 million people, covering birth years 1896 to 1996 in 200 countries. Only measured height was used. A Bayesian model gave more weight to national surveys than to local ones and drew on information from neighboring countries where national data were thin; the authors note that estimates for countries with limited or subnational data carry wider uncertainty. The series is also available as an interactive chart on Our World in Data.

A century of Saudi height in the 2016 series

Saudis born at the end of the 19th century were short by global standards: men ranked 174th of 200 in our data. Over the next sixty years, men gained 9.2 cm and women 7.0 cm. The gains slowed after the 1956 cohort, and both sexes peaked with the 1976 cohort. The 1996 cohort is 1.2 cm shorter than the peak for men and 0.6 cm for women.

Even so, Saudi men climbed 30 places in the world table, from 174th to 144th, because their early gains were faster than in many other countries. Saudi women slipped slightly, from 154th to 159th.

The late-century dip resembles a pattern described in the NCD-RisC paper for the Middle East and North Africa. The authors observed that men's height had recently stopped increasing or declined in some countries, such as Egypt and Yemen, while in others, notably Iran, both men and women kept growing. Saudi Arabia's modelled dip is small, and as the next section shows, newer data don't support it.

The newer NCD-RisC data tell a different story

In 2020, NCD-RisC published a second major analysis in The Lancet, this time of the height of school-age children and adolescents from 1985 to 2019. Its downloadable country data give a markedly different picture for Saudi Arabia:

That's a gain of 7.7 cm for young men and 6.2 cm for young women in 34 years. Ranked against all 200 countries in the same dataset, the increase for Saudi young women is the largest in the world, just ahead of South Korea and China, and the increase for young men is the second largest, behind only China (8.0 cm). On the 2019 height itself, 19-year-old Saudi men rank 132nd of 200 and young women 138th, so Saudi Arabia is catching up from a low starting point rather than overtaking tall countries.

These numbers can't be lined up directly with the 2016 series. The 2020 study drew on a newer and larger pool of data, used a model designed for growth through childhood and adolescence, and estimated height at age 19 in a calendar year rather than at 18 for a birth year. But the contrast is large. Nineteen-year-olds in 1985 were born around 1966, and the 2016 series puts the 1956 and 1976 cohorts at 167.3 cm and 168.9 cm, several centimeters above the 2020 model's 163.0 cm. The newer model, in other words, suggests that Saudis born in the 1960s were shorter than the 2016 series implied, and that those born around 2000 are taller.

We keep the 2016 adult figures as the headline values on this site because they're available for every country on the same basis. For Saudi Arabia in particular, though, the 2020 data are a strong hint that average height has continued to rise, and that the dip in the 2016 series reflects limited data rather than a real decline.

What could drive such a fast rise?

The NCD-RisC researchers didn't analyse causes for individual countries, so the data can't say exactly why Saudi adolescents grew so much taller between 1985 and 2019. What the study does say is that differences in height between populations are thought to arise mainly from environmental factors, above all the mother's health and nutrition during pregnancy and the child's nutrition and exposure to infections through childhood and adolescence. Height, in their framing, integrates many dimensions of development into one number.

The joint child-stunting estimates below are consistent with that framing: the share of stunted young children roughly halved between 1994 and 2020, over the same period in which adolescent height rose fastest. Two caveats apply. The stunting series jumps around between surveys, and the 2020 height model, like all such models, depends on the surveys that feed it, and the 2023 review found no recent nationally representative measured survey of Saudi adult height. A nationally representative measured survey of adult height, the kind the 2023 review called for, would be the best way to confirm the trend.

What Saudi surveys have measured

The 2005 STEPS survey

Saudi Arabia took part in the World Health Organization's STEPS programme for surveillance of noncommunicable disease risk factors, which includes physical measurement of height and weight. As tabulated on Wikipedia's country height list, the 2005 survey measured 2,244 men and 2,345 women aged 15 to 64, with average heights of about 167.1 cm for men and 154.3 cm for women.

Those all-ages figures are close to the NCD-RisC values for the cohorts born between the 1950s and the 1970s, which make up most of a 15–64 sample in 2005. They are not directly comparable with the 1996 cohort estimate.

A gap in national reference data

A 2023 review of anthropometric research on Saudi adults and older people found that, despite many individual studies, there were no standard guidelines established for evaluating anthropometric measurements in the Saudi population, and that inconsistent measurement and reporting could largely be attributed to that lack of national guidelines. It called for reference values based on a representative sample, in line with the country's Vision 2030 health goals.

The review notes, for example, that several studies have estimated stature from hand, foot or limb measurements for forensic purposes, and that one comparison found the stature of Saudis similar to that of Egyptians and Chinese. But it did not identify a recent nationally representative measured survey of adult height. That's why international modelled estimates such as NCD-RisC's are currently the most consistent source for comparing Saudi Arabia with other countries.

Child growth in Saudi Arabia

Childhood stunting, being too short for one's age compared with WHO growth standards, is closely tied to adult height. The UNICEF, WHO and World Bank joint estimates, published by the World Bank, show a substantial fall since the 1990s, but with considerable variation between surveys:

The halving of stunting since 1994 is consistent with the rapid rise in adolescent height in the 2020 NCD-RisC series. The jump to around 17 percent in 2016 and 2017 may reflect differences between surveys rather than a real change, a reminder that without a standard national measurement programme, year-to-year figures should be read cautiously.

Saudi Arabia and its neighbors

In the 1996-cohort data, Saudi men are level with Bahraini men and shorter than men in every other Gulf state, by 1.5 cm compared with Oman and by 4.4 cm compared with Kuwait. Saudi women are the shortest in the Gulf group. Yemen, to the south, is a clear outlier: Yemeni men are among the shortest in the world at about 160 cm, which NCD-RisC highlighted alongside Timor-Leste and Laos.

Iran stands out at the other end. Iranian men gained 16.5 cm over the century, the largest gain for men of any country, and are now almost 6 cm taller than Saudi men.

If the 2020 adolescent estimates are closer to the truth for today's young adults, the gap between Saudi Arabia and its Gulf neighbors may be narrower than this table suggests.

Why height is worth tracking

NCD-RisC's researchers argue that height is a meaningful public health measure. Taller adult height is associated with longer life and lower risk of heart disease, stroke and respiratory disease, and taller mothers have fewer pregnancy complications, although taller people also face a higher risk of some cancers. Because differences between countries are thought to arise mainly from environmental factors such as nutrition and infections in childhood, a country's height trend tracks how well its children have been nourished and protected over generations.

Making sense of an average

An average is the middle of a wide spread, not a target. Many Saudi men are taller than 180 cm, and many women are shorter than 150 cm. To see where a particular height ranks, use the height percentile calculator, or convert 168 cm to feet and inches.

If you're concerned about a child's growth, a pediatrician can assess it using standard growth charts.