165 cm = 5 ft 5 in

165 cm to feet and inches

NIST records that the international agreement of 1958, published in 1959, fixed the inch at exactly 25.4 mm. The conversion for 165 cm:

1. 165 ÷ 2.54 = 64.961 inches
2. 64.961 ÷ 12 = 5.413, so 5 feet
3. 64.961 − 60 = 4.96 inches
4. 165 cm = 5′ 4.96″, which is 5′5″ to within a millimeter

Exactly 5′5″ is 65 inches, or 165.1 cm. The gap of 0.1 cm is smaller than a typical measurement error, so 165 cm and 5′5″ can be treated as the same height. Decimal feet: 5.41 ft. That ".41" is a fraction of a foot, close to five inches, not 41 inches or 4.1 inches.

The reverse conversion, with 5′5″ broken down step by step, is on the 5′5″ to cm page.

The midpoint height of humanity

165 cm has an unusual property: it sits almost exactly halfway between the world's average man and average woman. Our World in Data, summarizing NCD Risk Factor Collaboration estimates, puts the global average for people born in 1996 at about 171 cm for men and 159 cm for women. The midpoint of those two figures is 165 cm.

OWID also reports that men are taller than women in every country, by about 12 cm worldwide, and that the ratio between them, about 1.07, has been fairly stable over the century. 165 cm is therefore a height that is "a little tall" for a woman and "a little short" for a man almost everywhere, which is exactly what the data below show.

The midpoint is not fixed, because the gap between the sexes varies by country and has changed over time. OWID highlights two contrasting cases: in South Korea the difference between men and women shrank from 18 cm to 13 cm over the century, as women's height rose faster, while in the Philippines it doubled from 7 cm to 14 cm, as men grew and women barely changed. In the site's NCD-RisC data, the midpoint between men and women born in 1996 is 164.6 cm in Japan (averages of 170.8 and 158.3 cm), 170.3 cm in the United States (177.1 and 163.5 cm) and 175.6 cm in the Netherlands (182.5 and 168.7 cm). So 165 cm is a "between the sexes" height globally and in Japan, while in the United States and the tallest European countries it is closer to the women's average than to the midpoint.

For women: the average in Northern Europe

NCD-RisC pooled 1,472 population studies, with heights measured on more than 18.6 million people, to estimate adult height for every birth year from 1896 to 1996. Women born in 1996 average within a centimeter of 165 cm in a long list of countries:

The Scandinavian rows tell a story of their own. Norwegian and Swedish women born in 1956 were already about 165.7 cm tall on average, and the 1996 cohort was no taller. NCD-RisC describes this kind of plateau in several Northern European and English-speaking countries, where gains stalled for two or three decades. Ireland and Russia, by contrast, gained around 3 cm between the 1956 and 1996 cohorts.

For men: the average in Peru, Afghanistan and Sri Lanka

The same height is an average male height in other parts of the world. NCD-RisC estimates for men born in 1996:

Peruvian men gained 10.3 cm across the century, while Ugandan and Nigerian men reached a peak among those born around the 1950s and then lost ground: Ugandan men born in 1996 are 3.9 cm shorter on average than those born in 1956. NCD-RisC reports declines of around 5 cm from peak in several sub-Saharan African countries, and Our World in Data notes that average heights in sub-Saharan Africa have fallen since about 1970.

165 cm in the United States

NHANES, the National Center for Health Statistics survey that measures participants in person, published its August 2021–August 2023 percentiles in June 2025. CDC FastStats summarizes the same survey's averages as 68.9 inches for men and 63.5 inches for women.

Percentiles are interpolated from the published table and approximate.

For American men aged 20 and over, 165 cm falls almost exactly at the 10th percentile (the published 10th percentile is 165.2 cm), meaning about one man in ten is this height or shorter. For women, it is above average at every age and in the top 13 percent among women over 70. The average US woman (161.2 cm) is 3.8 cm shorter and the average man (175.1 cm) is 10.1 cm taller.

Famous people at 165 cm

The list mixes men and women almost evenly, which fits a height that sits between the two sexes' averages. It also includes two Argentine football greats a few centimeters apart: in our data Maradona is listed 4 cm shorter than Lionel Messi (169 cm).

Earl Boykins and 165 cm in the NBA

Basketball offers the most extreme example of 165 cm succeeding in a tall profession. Earl Boykins, listed at 5′5″ (1.65 m), ranks as the second-shortest player in NBA history, behind 5′3″ Muggsy Bogues. He played 13 NBA seasons between 1998 and 2012 for teams including the Nets, Cavaliers, Magic, Clippers, Warriors, Nuggets, Bucks, Bobcats, Wizards and Rockets, finishing with 5,791 points (8.9 per game) and 2,092 assists.

His best-known night came on November 11, 2004, when he scored 32 points against the Detroit Pistons, which made him the shortest player in NBA history to score 30 or more in a game. He later moved into coaching and has been an assistant at USC since 2025.

Characters at 165 cm

In the site's character data, Tanjiro Kamado, the lead of Demon Slayer, is listed at 165 cm. His companions Zenitsu (164.5 cm) and Inosuke (164 cm) are within a centimeter, and Naruto Uzumaki and Izuku Midoriya are both listed at 166 cm. Several of the best-known shonen heroes, in other words, are drawn at almost exactly this height.

Teen growth through 165 cm

The CDC 2000 stature-for-age charts give a median and two shape parameters per month of age. Using the CDC's z-score method, 165 cm corresponds to:

The median boy passes 165 cm at about 14.2 years. The median girl never reaches it on this reference, because her adult median at age 20 is 163.3 cm.

Will my child be 165 cm? What genetics can and cannot say

Parents often look up a specific adult height when estimating how tall a child will be. Twin studies summarized in Wikipedia's human height article estimate that height differences within a population are 60 to 80 percent heritable, and large genetic studies have found hundreds of variants involved; one 2014 study identified 697 variants at 423 locations in the genome. Height is therefore strongly inherited but not determined by any single gene.

The environment sets the ceiling for a population. Our World in Data describes nutrition and health in pregnancy, childhood and adolescence as the main drivers of differences between countries, which is why the century-long changes in the tables above happened far too quickly to be genetic.

For an individual estimate, the height calculator uses published prediction methods based on parents' heights and a child's current measurements. Any prediction has a margin of several centimeters, and a pediatrician tracking growth over time is the right source for questions about an individual child.

Measuring 165 cm accurately

Because 165 cm and 5′5″ match to within a millimeter, the conversion adds no error; the measurement itself is what matters. Wikipedia's human height article cites a study in which children were on average 1.54 cm shorter in the late afternoon than right after getting up, so time of day can move a reading by more than a centimeter. For a dependable figure, measure barefoot on a hard floor with heels, buttocks and shoulders against a wall, look straight ahead, lay a flat book on the crown square to the wall, mark beneath it, and measure with a steel tape. Measuring at the same time on each occasion is the simplest way to make readings comparable.

Couples, work and clothing at 165 cm

• Couples. In a 2013 PLOS ONE study of 12,502 British couples, Stulp and colleagues found the man was taller in 92.5 percent of pairs, and the average difference was 14.11 cm. A 165 cm woman plus that average gap gives a partner of about 179 cm; the 5′5″ vs 6′0″ comparison shows a slightly larger, very common pairing.
• Horse racing. Flat jockeys typically stand between about 147 and 170 cm, so 165 cm is near the top of the usual range but well within it.
• Modeling. Petite models, who work mainly in commercial and print rather than runway, are described as being under about 168 cm; 165 cm falls in that category.

Compare 165 cm with anyone in our catalog in the 3D height comparison tool, or check how it ranks for a specific age with the height percentile calculator.