Average Height in Vietnam (Men & Women)

How tall Vietnamese people are on average

The NCD Risk Factor Collaboration (NCD-RisC) estimates that Vietnamese adults born in 1996 average 164.4 cm (5′5″) for men and 153.6 cm (5′0″) for women. Those are the figures used on this page, and they put Vietnam among the shorter countries in the world. In the 200-country NCD-RisC dataset, Vietnamese men rank around 183rd and women around 188th.

Vietnam is also a country where heights are rising quickly, and it measures them itself. A national survey in 2019–2020 found young men averaging 168.1 cm and young women 156.2 cm, several centimeters above the NCD-RisC figure. The two numbers don't contradict each other. They describe different generations, and the gap between them is the story of the country's recent progress.

The NCD-RisC estimate for the 1996 cohort and the national figure reported for 2010 happen to be identical to one decimal place. That's a coincidence of two different methods, but a useful one: it shows the model's estimate lines up with what Vietnam itself measured for young adults at around the same time.

Where the NCD-RisC figures come from

NCD-RisC pooled 1,472 population-based studies with measured heights for over 18.6 million people worldwide, and Vietnam's National Institute of Nutrition was among the contributing institutions. Self-reported heights were excluded. A statistical model then estimated average adult height by year of birth, from 1896 to 1996, for every country, adjusting for the height people lose as they age.

That means the 1996 figure is effectively the height of people who were 18 around 2014. It doesn't capture Vietnamese born in the 2000s, who are the subject of the national survey.

A century of growth

Vietnamese men born in 1896 averaged just 155.3 cm and women 144.8 cm, among the shortest averages anywhere in the NCD-RisC data. Both sexes gained about 8 cm by the 1956 cohort. Then growth almost stopped. Men born in 1976 were only 0.3 cm taller than those born 20 years earlier, and women's averages didn't change at all.

The stall matches what the older historical record shows. Our World in Data hosts reconstructions of men's heights by birth decade from Joerg Baten and Matthias Blum, built from military and other historical records. For Vietnam they show men at about 158 to 160 cm through the 19th century, a rise to about 162.5 cm for the 1940s birth decade, and then a slow decline to about 160 cm for men born in the 1980s. After that, the series picks up again: about 163 cm for the 1990s birth decade and 166 cm for the 2000s.

The series don't match exactly, because they use different sources and methods, but they agree on the shape. Vietnamese heights rose in the first half of the 20th century, stagnated for the generations born from the 1950s to the 1980s, and started rising again for children born after 1990.

Vietnam's 2019–2020 national survey

The latest national figures come from a survey by the General Statistics Office and the National Institute of Nutrition, carried out from late 2019 to early 2020. The Ministry of Health announced the results on 30 December 2020. According to Tuoi Tre News, about 22,000 people under 25 took part, and Vinmec reports that the sample was checked with help from experts at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Key findings reported by Tuoi Tre, VnExpress and Vinmec:

• Young men averaged 168.1 cm and young women 156.2 cm.
• Compared with about a decade earlier, men had gained 3.7 cm and women 2.6 cm.
• The previous survey had measured people born in 1990 or earlier. The new one mostly measured people born in the 2000s.
• Urban children were about 2 cm taller than rural children, with the largest shortfalls in poor rural, disaster-prone and mountainous areas.
• Stunting among children under five fell to 19.6 percent, the first time it had dropped below 20 percent.

Vietnamese officials say the country has measured heights roughly every ten years in recent decades, so the 2019–2020 round is the latest in a long series.

Why the youngest generation grew taller

Vinmec's summary credits interventions over the previous 20 years: support for nutrition in the first 1,000 days of life, school nutrition programs, deworming and vitamin supplementation. It also notes that the share of families exclusively breastfeeding for the first six months rose from 19.6 percent to over 45 percent in a decade. Dr Truong Hong Son of the Vietnam Medical Association attributed the gains to better nutrition, health care and living conditions over 20 years.

The Ministry of Health compared the growth from 1990 to 2020 to Japan's golden period of height increase between 1955 and 1995. Vinmec adds that it also resembles the gains in European countries in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Men gained more than women

Both the long-run model and the national surveys show Vietnamese men gaining height faster than women. In the NCD-RisC estimates, the gap between the sexes was 10.5 cm for people born in 1896 and 10.8 cm for those born in 1996. Between the 1956 and 1996 cohorts, men gained 1.5 cm and women only 0.3 cm.

The national surveys show the same tilt over a much shorter period. Between the survey around 2010 and the 2019–2020 round, young men gained 3.7 cm and young women 2.6 cm. The gap between them widened from 10.8 cm to 11.9 cm in a decade.

For comparison, the gap in the Netherlands, the tallest country in the NCD-RisC data, is 13.8 cm, so Vietnam's is still smaller than in the tallest populations. Vietnam's widening gap doesn't mean that girls have been left behind in absolute terms. Young women in the latest survey were still 2.6 cm taller than the women measured a decade earlier.

Reading the survey figures carefully

A few cautions apply when comparing Vietnam's national figures with other countries:

• Age group. The 2019–2020 survey reported heights for people under 25, not for all adults. Its averages describe the youngest generation only, and older Vietnamese are shorter on average.
• Generation. Because the participants were mostly born in the 2000s, their averages can't be compared directly with NCD-RisC figures for other countries born in 1996.
• Reporting. The figures on this page come from news and hospital summaries of the survey, not from the full statistical report. Tuoi Tre, VnExpress and Vinmec all give the same headline averages, but they differ in how much detail they give on the sample.

Still short by international standards

The gains are real, but they haven't closed the gap with taller countries. At a conference in August 2026, Dr Son said that Vietnamese people remain shorter on average than people in Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand. He also said, as quoted by VnExpress, that the country is "still among those with the shortest average height in the world."

VnExpress cited a later NCD-RisC analysis, published in The Lancet in 2020 and based on 2,181 studies with 65 million participants, that ranks Vietnam 153rd of 201 countries and territories. That analysis tracked height trajectories from 1985 to 2019, so its ranking isn't directly comparable with the 1996 adult cohort used here. Dr Son named genetics, nutrition, physical activity and sleep as the four main factors in height and said the school years are one of the most important periods for a child's growth.

Vietnam compared with its neighbors

In the NCD-RisC data, Vietnamese adults born in 1996 are taller than Cambodians and Laotians but well behind Thais and Chinese. Chinese men are 7.4 cm taller than Vietnamese men, a gap that opened over the century. Chinese men born in 1896 were 161.0 cm, only 5.7 cm taller than Vietnamese men of the same generation. The NCD-RisC authors highlight China and Thailand as countries where large East Asian-style height gains are still under way.

If you use the 2019–2020 national survey for Vietnam instead, young Vietnamese men (168.1 cm) are close to Thai men born in 1996 in the NCD-RisC model, though a fair comparison would need both countries measured in the same way and at the same age.

What these heights mean in everyday terms

A Vietnamese man born in the mid-1990s is about 5′5″ on average, and his younger brother born in the 2000s about 5′6″. For women, the step is from just over 5′0″ to about 5′1″. To see where an individual falls, try the height percentile calculator, or line up two people in the height comparison tool. The height converter handles centimeters to feet and inches if you're reading Vietnamese clothing or medical records. For the two headline male figures, the pages for 164 cm and 168 cm show the exact conversion and how each height compares with averages in other countries.

Height as a measure of living standards

Our World in Data describes height as a proxy for the "biological standard of living." Differences between individuals within a population are mostly genetic, while differences between populations and generations largely reflect nutrition and health in childhood. Vietnam is a strong example. The stall for Vietnamese born between the 1950s and 1980s and the recovery for those born since 1990 track the conditions children grew up in. The reports on the 2019–2020 survey link the gains to nutrition programs and better living conditions.

The next national survey should show whether the pace of growth continues. If children born in the 2010s grow as their elder siblings did, Vietnam could keep closing the gap with Thailand and Malaysia, as the average height by country rankings would show.