168 cm = 5 ft 6.1 in

168 cm in feet and inches

NIST notes that the inch has been exactly 25.4 mm since July 1, 1959, when the conversion factors agreed by English-speaking nations came into force. For 168 cm:

1. 168 ÷ 2.54 = 66.142 inches
2. 66.142 ÷ 12 = 5.512, so 5 feet
3. 66.142 − 60 = 6.14 inches
4. 168 cm = 5′ 6.14″, or 5′6″ to the nearest inch

Exactly 5′6″ is 66 inches, or 167.64 cm, so 168 cm is 0.36 cm (about a seventh of an inch) taller than five-six. Any measurement from about 166.4 cm to 168.9 cm rounds to the same 5′6″ label. Decimal feet: 5.51 ft, which is 5 feet plus half a foot plus a sliver.

The reverse conversion is on the 5′6″ to cm page.

The average woman in the world's tallest countries

168 cm is the height of the typical young woman in the tallest-averaging countries on Earth. The NCD Risk Factor Collaboration (NCD-RisC) pooled 1,472 population-based studies with height measurements from more than 18.6 million people and reports that women born in 1996 in Latvia, the Netherlands, Estonia and the Czech Republic average more than 168 cm.

Two different stories sit inside this table.

The Netherlands and Denmark have stopped growing. Dutch women born in 1976 averaged 169.0 cm, slightly more than the 1996 cohort's 168.7 cm, and Danish women show a similar small dip. Our World in Data notes that the Netherlands, the tallest population, has stopped getting taller, and mentions proposed explanations including a possible genetic ceiling or recent lifestyle changes.

The Baltic and Central European countries are still catching up. Latvian women gained 1.7 cm between the 1976 and 1996 cohorts, Czech women 1.3 cm and Serbian women 1.0 cm. NCD-RisC describes how Eastern European countries continued to gain after Northern Europe and the English-speaking world had plateaued, and Latvian women now lead the world.

Our World in Data puts the global average for women born in 1996 at about 159 cm, so 168 cm is roughly 9 cm above the world's average woman.

The average man in Mexico and Ghana

The same 168 cm is close to the average man in a quite different group of countries. NCD-RisC estimates for men born in 1996:

Mexican men gained 12.3 cm across the century, and Malaysian men 10.3 cm. In Cameroon and Niger, by contrast, men born in 1956 were 3 to 4 cm taller than those born in 1996, part of the decline across several sub-Saharan countries that NCD-RisC describes. Our World in Data notes that nutrition is among the strongest determinants of height and that average heights in sub-Saharan Africa have fallen since 1970.

The global average for men born in 1996 is about 171 cm, according to Our World in Data, so 168 cm is 3 cm below the world's average man. Our World in Data also points out that men are taller than women in every country, by about 12 cm worldwide, which is why 168 cm can be the average Dutch woman and a below-average man in the same breath.

What a 168 cm national average says about health

Why do researchers care whether a country's women average 168 cm or 150 cm? NCD-RisC's paper explains that adult height is a marker of nutrition and health in childhood, and that it is linked to later-life health in both directions. Taller people on average live longer and have lower risks of some heart, respiratory and pregnancy-related conditions, while having higher risks of some cancers.

The authors put rough numbers on the gap between the tallest and shortest countries. If the associations are causal, the roughly 20 cm difference in average height between tall and short countries corresponds to about 17 percent lower cardiovascular mortality, and 20 to 40 percent higher risk of certain cancers, in the taller countries. They also found that population height gains were correlated with lower mortality at middle and older ages, with correlations of −0.58 for men and −0.68 for women. Short maternal height, they add, is associated with a higher risk of small-for-gestational-age and preterm births.

These are population-level patterns. They do not mean that a 168 cm individual is healthier than a 158 cm one, and they say nothing about any one person's risk. They do explain why public health researchers track national height averages closely: a country whose women now average 168 cm, as in the Netherlands, Estonia and Czechia, is one where, by the reasoning in both NCD-RisC and Our World in Data, generations of children grew up with good nutrition and health.

How 168 cm ranks in the United States

The National Center for Health Statistics measures Americans in person through NHANES. Percentiles from the August 2021–August 2023 survey, published in June 2025:

Percentiles are interpolated between published values. The 95th percentile for women 80 and over was not published, so for that group 168 cm can only be described as above the 90th percentile (165.5 cm).

A 168 cm woman in her 20s is taller than about three quarters of her peers, and the average adult woman (161.2 cm) is 6.8 cm shorter. A 168 cm man is 7.1 cm shorter than the average adult man (175.1 cm), and taller than only about one man in six.

Lionel Messi and other famous people near 168 cm

The best-known person near this height in the site's data is Lionel Messi, listed at 169 cm. Our data notes that the FC Barcelona profile cited on Wikidata gave 169 cm, while Inter Miami lists him at 5′7″ (170 cm). The one-centimeter discrepancy is typical of how club listings round. Either way, Messi is within 2 cm of 168 cm and almost exactly the average height of Mexican men born in 1996.

No other celebrity with a page on this site is listed between 167 and 169 cm. The nearest are Bruno Mars and Selena Gomez at 165.1 cm, and Tom Cruise at 170 cm.

Characters at 168 cm

In the same databooks Sasuke is listed 2 cm taller than Naruto Uzumaki (166 cm), and Makima is listed within a centimeter of the average Dutch woman born in 1996 (168.7 cm).

168 cm as an industry boundary

Several professions use heights near 168 cm as a dividing line:

• Modeling. Petite models, who work mostly in commercial and print rather than runway, are described as women under about 168 cm. The British Association of Model Agents has said female runway models should be between 173 cm (5′8″) and 180 cm (5′11″). A 168 cm woman is therefore right at the top of the petite category and 5 cm short of the runway minimum.
• Horse racing. Flat-racing jockeys typically stand between about 147 and 170 cm. 168 cm is near the upper end, and riding weight, usually 49 to 54 kg on the flat, is the real constraint.
• Airline history. A 1966 Eastern Airlines advertisement required stewardesses to be between 5′2″ and 5′9″. A 168 cm candidate would have been comfortably inside that range; today airlines typically quote a range above about 152 cm and below about 185 cm.

Teen growth at 168 cm

The CDC's 2000 stature-for-age charts provide a median and two shape parameters for each month of age. Converting 168 cm with the CDC's z-score method:

The median boy reaches 168 cm at about 14.7 years. The median girl never reaches it on this reference, since her adult median is 163.3 cm. Wikipedia's summary of growth research puts the typical end of growth at about 15 to 16 for girls and 18 to 19 for boys, which is why the two columns diverge.

Couples at 168 cm

In the 2013 PLOS ONE study of 12,502 British couples by Stulp and colleagues, the man was taller in 92.5 percent of pairs, and the average difference was 14.11 cm. A 168 cm woman plus that average gap gives a partner of about 182 cm. The study cites earlier work suggesting both sexes accept a maximum difference of about 17 percent with the man taller; for 168 cm that is about 28.6 cm. The 5′6″ vs 6′0″ and 5′6″ vs 6′2″ comparisons show the two most common pairings with this height.

A 168 cm woman is taller than roughly one in six American men, and the same study found that couples where the woman is as tall or taller occur less often than random pairing would predict, 7.5 percent versus 10.2 percent.

Measuring and comparing

Height varies over the day; a study summarized in Wikipedia's human height article found children lost an average of 1.54 cm between getting up and late afternoon. Measure barefoot against a wall with a flat book on your head, mark it, and use a steel tape, ideally at the same time of day each time. Then compare your result with 166 cm, 170 cm or anyone in the catalog using the 3D height comparison tool, and see your percentile for any age with the height percentile calculator.