Average Height in Switzerland (Men & Women)

Switzerland's average height

Switzerland measures its young men more thoroughly than almost any country, and its researchers have produced some of Europe's best height research. In the NCD Risk Factor Collaboration (NCD-RisC) estimates for the 1996 birth cohort, Swiss men average 178.4 cm (5′10″) and Swiss women 163.5 cm (5′4″). Men rank 22nd of 200 countries and women 42nd.

The women's figure deserves a caveat from the start. Measured Swiss data from the national nutrition survey put women closer to 166 cm, a difference discussed in detail below. The men's figure, by contrast, agrees closely with Swiss conscription records.

How NCD-RisC estimates height

NCD-RisC's 2016 eLife study combined 1,472 population-based studies covering more than 18.6 million adults with measured height, leaving out self-reports because people tend to overstate. A Bayesian model then estimated the average height each birth cohort reached at 18. Switzerland has one of the deepest records in the world: NCD-RisC notes that data on people born from 1860 to 1895 were available for only six countries, Switzerland among them. The model starts from the 1896 cohort, so the Swiss series below covers a century.

A century of Swiss growth

In the NCD-RisC series, Swiss men gained 10.9 cm across the century, steadily, with about 4 cm per thirty-year period through the 1956 cohort and smaller gains afterward. Swiss women started out relatively tall, at 157.5 cm in the 1896 cohort, but gained only 6.0 cm over the century, and their estimate for the 1996 cohort is 0.8 cm below the 1976 peak. That small gain for women is the main reason Switzerland's gap between the sexes, 14.9 cm, is wider than the roughly 12 cm global gap described by Our World in Data.

Sliding down the women's ranking

The NCD-RisC series also shows how Switzerland's world ranking changed by cohort. Swiss women born in 1896 ranked 9th in the world, among the tallest women of their generation. Because they gained less than women almost anywhere else in Europe, they slipped to 29th by the 1956 cohort and 42nd by the 1996 cohort. Swiss men moved the other way at the end of the century, from 32nd in the 1956 and 1976 cohorts back up to 22nd in 1996.

The women's slide is one reason to look carefully at the national measured data. If Swiss women really plateaued at about 166 cm, as menuCH suggests, their ranking for recent cohorts would be around 12th of 200, more in line with Swiss men and with the pattern of their early-20th-century predecessors.

130 years of Swiss conscripts

Swiss conscription assessments reach the large majority of young men, and researchers at the University of Zurich, led by Kaspar Staub, have used those records to reconstruct Swiss height since the 19th century.

Their 2011 paper in Swiss Medical Weekly analyzed 458,322 conscripts aged 18 and 19 measured between 1992 and 2009, a sample described as representing about 90% of Swiss men, and placed them in the context of earlier records going back to 1878. Key results:

• In 2009, 19-year-old conscripts averaged 178.2 cm.
• Average height of 19-year-olds increased by 14.9 cm between 1878–79 and 2009.
• Growth has slowed considerably in recent decades, and the authors said the reasons for that slowdown had not yet been identified.

The 2009 average of 178.2 cm sits within 0.2 cm of the NCD-RisC estimate for Swiss men born in 1996, which is reassuring agreement between a national register and a global model.

How the height distribution shifted

The same paper shows what 15 cm of growth means for the whole distribution, not just the average:

In the late 1870s, fewer than one conscript in a hundred reached 180 cm. By 2008–09, more than four in ten did. The 2009 percentiles were 168 cm at the 5th percentile, 174 cm at the 25th, 178 cm at the median, 182 cm at the 75th and 189 cm at the 95th. You can compare your own height with distributions like this using the height percentile calculator.

More research from Zurich

The University of Zurich maintains a list of Swiss height publications that shows how much ground the research has covered: Genevan conscripts in 1835, social inequality in conscription data from 1875 to 1950, small-area maps of conscript height, a comparison of female and male adult height in Switzerland from 1770 to 1930, a shift in the height distribution from left-skewed to symmetric since the late 19th century, and a change "from growth in height to growth in breadth" in recent decades. The same list includes the NCD-RisC eLife paper that produced the global estimates used on this page.

Did Swiss adults stop growing? The menuCH survey

Conscript records cover men only. To see whether Swiss women had followed the same path, Vinci, Staub and colleagues turned to menuCH, the national nutrition survey for adults carried out in 2014/2015, in which height was measured. Their 2019 paper in Economics and Human Biology reported:

• Average measured height rose by 4.5 to 5.0 cm for both men and women between those born in 1937–1949 and those born in 1990–1995.
• The increase was not linear. From the 1970s birth years onward, average height plateaued at about 178 cm for men and 166 cm for women.
• When people reported their own height, they overestimated it by about 1 cm on average, more so among older and shorter people.
• Participants from the Italian-speaking part of Switzerland, and those with less education, were shorter on average.
• Adjusting for being born abroad or for age-related shrinkage did not change the pattern.

A notable difference for women

The menuCH plateau of about 178 cm for men matches both the conscript data and NCD-RisC. For women, though, menuCH's plateau of about 166 cm is roughly 2.5 cm higher than the NCD-RisC estimate of 163.5 cm. That is a larger gap than usually seen between national measured data and the global model for European countries. NCD-RisC estimates carry uncertainty, especially where fewer measured studies of women are available, and they smooth trends across cohorts. If the menuCH figure is closer to reality, Swiss women would sit slightly above the simple average of 41 European countries in the site data (165.1 cm) rather than well below it. This page keeps the NCD-RisC values for consistency with every other country, but the national survey is the more direct measurement of Swiss women.

An older, self-reported comparison illustrates the same difficulty. National surveys from 1987 to 1994, compiled by Cavelaars and colleagues and listed on Wikipedia's table of national heights, gave Swiss adults aged 20 to 74 averages of 175.4 cm for men and 164 cm for women. Those figures span many generations and are self-reported, so they are not comparable with either menuCH or NCD-RisC, but they show how much the answer depends on who is measured and how.

From taller to broader: conscripts today

Recent research on Swiss conscripts has shifted from height to weight and fitness. A study of 706,994 conscription records from 2006 to 2024, published in BMJ Open in 2026, found that mean BMI in male conscripts rose from 23.2 to 24.1, overweight prevalence from 17% to 23% and obesity from 5% to 9%, while scores on the army fitness test declined. Female volunteers, who made up 0.9% of the records, improved their fitness scores.

A smaller 2018 study of 1,548 conscripts at two centers found that a quarter were overweight or obese by BMI, and that elevated BMI, waist circumference and waist-to-height ratio were more common among men with lower occupational status, in rural areas and in central and northwestern Switzerland. Together with the menuCH findings on education, these studies show that social differences in body size persist in one of Europe's wealthiest countries.

Switzerland compared with its neighbors

In the NCD-RisC estimates, Swiss men sit in the middle of their neighbors: 1.5 cm shorter than German men and 1 cm taller than Austrian men. Swiss women come out shortest in this group, though if the menuCH figure of about 166 cm is used instead, they would be the tallest. The country's language regions border these neighbors, and the menuCH finding that Italian-speaking Swiss are shorter mirrors the fact that Italy is one of the shorter countries on this list.

Swiss height in daily life

An average Swiss man, at 178.4 cm, is about 5′10″, and in the conscript data the median 19-year-old is 178 cm. An average Swiss woman is 163.5 cm (5′4″) in NCD-RisC, or about 166 cm (5′5″) in menuCH. The 2009 conscript percentiles give a practical sense of what counts as tall or short among young Swiss men. A man of 182 cm was taller than three-quarters of conscripts, and one of 189 cm was in the tallest 5%. At the other end, 168 cm marked the shortest 5% and 170 cm the shortest 10%. Half of all 19-year-old conscripts fell between 174 cm and 182 cm, an eight-centimeter band that covers most of the men you would meet in a Swiss classroom or office of that generation. To see Swiss averages side by side, or next to your own height, use the height comparison tool.

Summary

NCD-RisC estimates Swiss men at 178.4 cm and women at 163.5 cm. Conscript records show men's height rising 14.9 cm between 1878–79 and 2009, to 178.2 cm, with growth slowing sharply in recent decades and the share of men at 180 cm or more rising from under 1% to over 40%. The national menuCH survey confirms a plateau from the 1970s birth cohorts, at about 178 cm for men and 166 cm for women, the latter noticeably higher than the global estimate. For other countries, see the average height by country guide.