Average Height in Yemen (Men & Women)

Average height in Yemen

Yemeni men born in 1996 average 159.9 cm (5′3″) and Yemeni women 154.0 cm (5′0½″), according to the NCD Risk Factor Collaboration (NCD-RisC) estimates used on every country page of this site. That makes Yemeni men the second shortest of 200 countries, just 0.1 cm above East Timor. Yemeni women rank 183rd.

The ranking is only part of the story. In the NCD-RisC estimates, Yemeni men born in the 1950s were 4.5 cm taller than those born in 1996. Few countries in the world have seen a fall that large. This guide explains how the estimates work, traces Yemen's century of rise and decline, looks at what the country's 2013 national health survey found about women's height and children's growth, and compares Yemen with its neighbors.

About the estimates

Yemen's numbers come from NCD-RisC's 2016 eLife study, which modeled average height at age 18 for every birth year from 1896 to 1996 across 200 countries and territories, using measured data only. For Yemen that model produces one of the sharpest recent reversals anywhere: men born in 1956 averaged 164.4 cm, but men born in 1996 averaged 159.9 cm, back below the 1926 cohort.

Each number describes a birth cohort. The 159.9 cm headline refers to men born in 1996, who reached adulthood around 2014. Older Yemeni men, born in the 1950s to 1970s, are estimated to be taller on average, which is the reverse of the usual pattern.

Data availability shapes the estimates. NCD-RisC notes that only 72 countries had data for people born in 1920 or earlier, so the earliest values for countries like Yemen rely heavily on the model and carry wide uncertainty.

A century of rise and fall

For the first 60 years, Yemeni height rose quickly. Men born in 1926 were 6.2 cm taller than those born in 1896, and men born in 1956 another 3.7 cm taller. Women gained 9.3 cm over the same period.

Then the paths split. Men's average was flat between the 1956 and 1976 cohorts and then fell sharply, to 159.9 cm for the 1996 cohort, 4.5 cm below its peak. Women's average peaked for the 1976 cohort at 155.0 cm and slipped only 1.0 cm by 1996.

The NCD-RisC paper highlights this pattern directly. It names Yemen, with Egypt, as a country where men's height declined or stagnated in recent cohorts while women's did not, and notes that Yemeni men born in 1996 were among the shortest in the world at about 160 cm.

A shrinking gap between the sexes

Because men lost height and women largely didn't, the gap between them collapsed. For the 1956 cohort, Yemeni men were 10.0 cm taller than women. For the 1996 cohort, the gap is 5.9 cm, the third smallest of the 200 countries in the site data, after Gambia and Mauritania. Across all 200 countries in the site data, the median gap is 12.0 cm, and in nine countries out of ten it is at least 9.4 cm.

The sources reviewed here don't explain why men's height fell so much more than women's. What they do document is the setting in which children born in the 1980s and 1990s grew up.

Childhood stunting: among the world's highest

Stunting, being too short for one's age, is the clearest sign that a generation's growth is being held back, and it is set mostly in the first two years of life, as Our World in Data explains. Yemen's stunting rates have been extremely high for as long as they've been measured.

Demographic and Health Surveys tell the same story: 49.2% of children under 5 were stunted in the 1991 survey, 56.4% in 1997 and 46.5% in 2013. Children who were under 5 in the 1990s were born in the late 1980s and 1990s, the same generation as the NCD-RisC 1996 cohort. With more than half of them stunted, it is not surprising that this generation grew up shorter than its parents.

The more recent figures are worrying for the next generation. After falling from the mid-2000s, stunting was 48.5% in 2022, close to its levels of the 1990s.

The 2013 national health survey

Yemen's most detailed recent data on height come from the Yemen National Health and Demographic Survey (YNHDS) 2013, carried out by the Ministry of Public Health and Population and the Central Statistical Organization with support from PAPFAM and ICF through the DHS Program. Forty interviewing teams collected data from September 14 to November 23, 2013, with a two-week break for Eid al-Adha. It was the first survey designed to provide representative data for every governorate.

The survey measured the height and weight of 94% of women aged 15 to 49 in interviewed households. Like other DHS surveys, it reports women's height mainly as the share below 145 cm. The report explains why: height is an outcome of genetics combined with nutrition during childhood and adolescence, and in women small stature is frequently associated with a small pelvis, which raises the risk of difficult delivery. Short women also have a higher risk of low birthweight babies.

Short stature among Yemeni women

Nationally, 7.2% of women aged 15 to 49 were shorter than 145 cm (about 4′9″), down slightly from 8.7% in the 1997 survey. The share varied a great deal by governorate:

Reimah stands out, with almost one woman in five below 145 cm, nearly eight times the share in Al-Baidha. Other gradients follow the patterns seen worldwide. The share was 7.6% in rural areas and 6.5% in urban areas; 7.8% among women with no education and 3.5% among women with higher education; and 9.5% in the poorest fifth of households against 5.3% in the richest.

By age, the youngest women, aged 15 to 19, had the highest share at 9.4%, compared with 5.9% to 7.7% in older groups. That age group includes adolescents, and the report notes that nutrition during adolescence as well as childhood shapes adult height, so it isn't directly comparable with the older groups.

Children's growth in 2013

The same survey found that 47% of children under 5 were stunted and 23% severely stunted. Stunting peaked at 58% among children aged 36 to 47 months. It was 51% in rural areas and 34% in urban areas, and it fell steeply with mothers' education, from 54% among children of mothers with no education to 24% among those whose mothers had higher education. By household wealth, stunting ranged from 59% in the poorest fifth to 26% in the richest. Children born less than 24 months after a sibling were more likely to be stunted (55%) than those born 48 months or more after one (39%).

Boys, girls and wasting

The 2013 survey found a slightly higher stunting rate among boys (48%) than girls (45%). That small difference is worth noting given the NCD-RisC finding that men's height fell more than women's, but a three-point gap in one survey is far too small to explain a 4 cm difference in the adult trends, and the report doesn't draw that link.

Acute undernutrition was also common. Sixteen percent of children under 5 were wasted, meaning too thin for their height, and 5% were severely wasted. Wasting peaked at 28% among children aged 6 to 8 months. Children reported to have been smaller than average at birth were more likely to be wasted, 21% against 14%, and rural children slightly more than urban children, 17% against 14%.

Wasting and stunting measure different things. The survey report describes wasting as reflecting inadequate nutrition in the period just before the survey, from too little food or a recent illness. Stunting, by contrast, reflects inadequate nutrition over a long period, along with recurrent and chronic illness, and is not sensitive to short-term changes in diet. It is stunting that carries through into adult height.

Weight among women

The survey also found a double burden. A quarter of women aged 15 to 49 were thin (BMI below 18.5) while 24% were overweight or obese, leading the report to conclude that overweight and obesity may be as much of a concern as underweight. Overweight or obesity affected 36% of urban women and 17% of rural women.

Recent conditions

UNICEF describes a severe nutrition situation in Yemen. Its nutrition page estimates that about 2.2 million children are acutely malnourished, including around 516,000 with severe acute malnutrition, and that only 15% of children eat the minimum acceptable diet for growth and development. It cites a deteriorating economy, with an estimated 80% of Yemenis in debt and struggling to pay for food, water, transport and health care, along with weak health, water and sanitation systems and disease outbreaks. UNICEF also reports that almost a quarter of women are malnourished, with no improvement since 1997.

These conditions affect children born long after the 1996 cohort described on this page, so they aren't reflected in the headline numbers. But given how closely adult height follows childhood nutrition, they suggest that Yemeni children growing up now face the same pressures that held back earlier generations.

Yemen and its neighbors

Yemeni men are 9.3 cm shorter than Omani men and 7.8 cm shorter than Saudi men. Even compared with Somalia and Ethiopia, two of the shorter countries in the region, the gap is more than 6 cm. For women, the differences are smaller, 1.7 cm to 3.3 cm, because Yemeni women's height did not fall the way men's did. Egypt, the other country NCD-RisC named for falling male height, is 6.8 cm taller for men.

Practical context

An average Yemeni man born in 1996 is about 5′3″, close to the 160 cm page, and an average Yemeni woman about 5′0½″. Unusually, older Yemeni men are estimated to be taller than younger ones: men born in 1956 averaged 164.4 cm.

To see how your height compares with Yemeni men or women born in 1996, use the height percentile calculator. For the full ranking of 200 countries and an explanation of the data, visit the average height hub.