Average Height in Turkey (Men & Women)

Average height in Turkey today

The NCD Risk Factor Collaboration (NCD-RisC) estimates that adults in Turkey born in 1996 average 174.2 cm (5′9″) for men and 160.5 cm (5′3″) for women. Those are the figures used on this page and across the site. They put Turkish men around 62nd of 200 countries and Turkish women around 80th, close to the top third of the world for men.

That's a big step up from a century ago. Turkish men born in 1896 ranked around 145th and women around 146th. That's a climb of more than 80 places for men in the NCD-RisC rankings, and both sexes were still at their tallest in the most recent cohort.

Where these figures come from

NCD-RisC is a worldwide network of health researchers. For its 2016 study in eLife, it reanalyzed 1,472 population-based studies that measured the height of more than 18.6 million people in 200 countries. Researchers from Istanbul University and Karadeniz Technical University were among the Turkish collaborators. Only measured heights were used. Self-reported heights were excluded, because the study's authors consider self-report the single biggest source of bias in adult height data.

The study estimates average height by year of birth. The 1996 figure describes people who turned 18 around 2014, adjusted for the gradual loss of height that comes with age. It's not the average of all Turkish adults today, which would include older and shorter generations.

A century of growth

The rise was steady over the whole century. Men gained about 6 cm between the 1896 and 1926 cohorts, another 4.4 cm by 1956, and 3.5 cm more by 1996. Women's gains followed a similar path but were smaller in total, so the gap between men and women widened from 10.7 cm to 13.7 cm.

The pace has slowed. Men born in 1996 were only 0.9 cm taller than those born in 1976. In the year-by-year series published by Our World in Data, the 1996 cohort is still the tallest for both sexes, so Turkish heights hadn't started to fall. But the large gains of the early and mid-20th century were over.

A different picture in the older records

For a longer perspective, Our World in Data charts the Clio-Infra series assembled by Joerg Baten and Matthias Blum from historical military, prison and survey records, grouped by birth decade. For Turkey, their early figures diverge noticeably from NCD-RisC's.

Baten and Blum have men born in the 19th century at around 168 to 170 cm, well above NCD-RisC's 160.3 cm for the 1896 cohort. Their series also shows a dip for men born in the 1940s and 1950s and only modest gains after that. NCD-RisC instead shows continuous growth.

The two datasets rely on different records. Long-run height histories, as the NCD-RisC paper notes, have mostly been built from records of conscripts, soldiers and convicts, while NCD-RisC uses population-based health surveys. The disagreement means the size of Turkey's century-long gain is less certain than its end point. Both series agree that young Turkish men born in the late 20th century were around 170 to 174 cm.

A long view

Our World in Data also reproduces skeletal height estimates collected by the economic historian Gregory Clark. Men in Turkey around 2500 BC are estimated at about 166 cm, based on 72 skeletons. On those figures, Bronze Age Anatolian men were taller than Turkish men born in 1896 according to NCD-RisC, and several centimeters shorter than the 1996 cohort.

What Turkey's health surveys show

Turkey has run Demographic and Health Surveys since the 1990s. The 2018 round was carried out by Hacettepe University's Institute of Population Studies. Survey teams weighed women on digital SECA scales and measured them with a Shorr Productions wooden height board, the same equipment used for children.

The published reports don't give average adult height. They report the share of women under 145 cm, the threshold surveys use to flag a higher risk of delivery complications, because short stature is often linked to a small pelvis.

Very short stature is becoming rarer

The age breakdown in 2018 tells the same story within a single survey. Only 0.4 percent of women aged 15–19 and 0.5 percent of women aged 20–29 were under 145 cm, compared with 1.5 percent of women in their thirties and 1.9 percent of women in their forties. Each younger generation has fewer very short women, which is what you'd expect in a country where heights have been rising.

Regional and social differences

The 2018 survey shows where very short stature is most common:

• Region: The West had the lowest share (0.7 percent), followed by Central Turkey (0.9 percent). The South (1.7 percent), East (1.8 percent) and North (2.5 percent) had higher shares.
• Sub-regions: Central Anatolia (0.4 percent) and Istanbul (0.5 percent) had the lowest shares, while the West Black Sea (2.7 percent) and Southeast Anatolia (2.1 percent) had the highest.
• Urban and rural: 0.9 percent of urban women were under 145 cm, against 2.1 percent of rural women.
• Education: 3.0 percent of women with no schooling or incomplete primary school were under 145 cm, against 0.4 percent of women with high school or higher education.
• Wealth: 2.4 percent of women in the poorest fifth of households were under 145 cm.

These shares are small everywhere. They're useful as a sign of where childhood nutrition was weakest when these women were growing up.

Childhood stunting has fallen steeply

Stunting, a height-for-age more than two standard deviations below the WHO standard, is the Turkey DHS's main measure of long-term undernutrition in children. The report describes it as the result of inadequate nutrition over a long period and of recurrent infections or chronic illness.

The DHS Program's data show stunting among children under five dropping from 23.4 percent in 1993 to 18.8 percent in 1998. The 2018 survey found that about 6 percent of children under five were stunted. Children growing up with less stunting tend to become taller adults, so the drop suggests Turkish heights may keep edging up in cohorts born after 1996.

The same 2018 survey also shows the other side of nutrition change. Among women aged 15–49, 59 percent were overweight or obese, 37 percent had a normal BMI and 4 percent were thin. Among children under five, 8 percent were overweight.

Turkey compared with its neighbors

Turkey sits between its European and Middle Eastern neighbors. Turkish men are about 3 to 4 cm shorter than Greek and Bulgarian men and about 4 cm taller than Iraqi and Syrian men. They're almost exactly as tall as Georgian men and slightly taller than Iranian men, who had the largest male height gain in the world over the century.

Turkish women show a wider gap with their European neighbors. They're about 4.4 cm shorter than Greek and Bulgarian women and 2.5 cm shorter than Georgian women.

Catching up with southern Europe

Turkey's century looks different when it's set against the Mediterranean countries it is often compared with. In the 1896 cohort, Turkish men were the shortest of the group below. A century later they were still the shortest, but the gap had narrowed with some countries and widened with others.

Three things stand out:

• Turkey closed the gap with Bulgaria and Italy. Turkish men were 6.2 cm shorter than Bulgarian men in the 1896 cohort and 4 cm shorter in the 1996 cohort. The gap with Italy shrank from 4.4 cm to 3.6 cm.
• Greece and Spain pulled slightly ahead. Both started about 2 cm taller than Turkey and gained a little more, so they finished 2.4 to 3.1 cm ahead.
• The gains are similar in size. All five countries added between about 12 and 15 cm over the century. Turkey's rise was large by world standards, but so was southern Europe's. The NCD-RisC paper singles out Greece among southern European countries with large gains.

For women, the picture is less favorable. Turkish women gained 10.9 cm over the century, while Greek women gained 14.3 cm and Bulgarian women 12.6 cm. Turkish women born in 1896 were 1 cm shorter than Greek women. By the 1996 cohort the gap was 4.4 cm.

Men and women grew apart

That slower growth among women shows up in Turkey's own data too. The difference between the average Turkish man and woman widened from 10.7 cm in the 1896 cohort to 13.7 cm in the 1996 cohort. The gap was already 14.4 cm for the 1976 cohort, before women gained 1.6 cm over the next 20 years while men gained 0.9 cm. That late catch-up by women, together with the steady fall in very short stature in the Turkey DHS, suggests that recent improvements in nutrition have reached girls as well as boys.

Turkish heights in everyday terms

A typical Turkish man born in the 1990s is about 5′9″, and a typical woman about 5′3″. To see how a particular height compares, use the height percentile calculator, or place two people side by side in the height comparison tool. The average height hub lists every country on the same NCD-RisC basis.

Turkey's record shows how a country's height can change within a few generations as child health and nutrition improve. With childhood stunting now down to about 6 percent, the next pooled analyses should show whether Turks born in the 2000s and 2010s keep adding height.