5′0″ vs 5′7″ Height Difference

Converting 5′0″ and 5′7″

Five feet is 60 inches and five feet seven is 67. Because the inch has been defined as exactly 25.4 mm since 1959, as NIST records, the metric values are exact: 152.40 cm and 170.18 cm. The gap is 7 inches, or 17.78 cm, and the taller person is 11.7% taller (67 ÷ 60 ≈ 1.117).

For more on each height on its own, see 5′0″ in cm and 5′7″ in cm.

A couple that is short by US standards, average by global ones

What makes this pairing interesting is that both people are below the American average for their sex, yet the gap between them is larger than the typical one.

In the latest US reference data, from NHANES examinations between August 2021 and August 2023, the average woman aged 20 and older measures 63.5 inches and the average man 68.9 inches. A 5′0″ woman is 3.5 inches below that female mean and near the 11th percentile; the 10th percentile for women is 59.8 inches and the 15th is 60.6. A 5′7″ man is about 2 inches below the male mean, around the 26th percentile; the 25th percentile is 66.9 inches. So roughly three in four American men are taller than him and close to nine in ten American women are taller than her.

Step back to the whole world and the picture flips. Our World in Data, summarizing the NCD Risk Factor Collaboration's estimates for people born in 1996, puts the global average man at about 171 cm and the global average woman at about 159 cm. A 5′7″ man, at 170.2 cm, is essentially the global average. A 5′0″ woman is about 6.6 cm below the global female average, but still taller than the national averages in a number of populous countries.

How the picture changes with age

National averages hide a generational shift, and NHANES reports heights by decade of age. For a 5′0″ woman and a 5′7″ man, the comparison looks quite different depending on when they were born.

Among women in their twenties, 60 inches is just below the 5th percentile, so a young 5′0″ woman is shorter than about 95% of her peers. Among women in their seventies, the same height sits near the 15th percentile, still short but much less unusual. For men, 67 inches is just under the 25th percentile among those aged 20 to 29, but between the 25th percentile and the median for men in their seventies, about 40th percentile territory.

The survey measures people as they are today, not as they were at 25, so it cannot separate generational change in growth from changes that come with age. Either way, a couple of retirement age at these heights sits much closer to the middle of their generation than a couple in their twenties.

Where these are the national averages

The NCD-RisC study pooled 1,472 population studies with measured heights of more than 18.6 million people. Its estimates for the 1996 birth cohort show how ordinary this pairing is in large parts of the world:

A 5′0″ woman matches the averages in India and Indonesia almost exactly. A 5′7″ man is very close to the averages in Morocco, Algeria, Iraq and Syria, and slightly above the average man in Mexico. In the Philippines, where women average under 150 cm, a 5′0″ woman is above average.

The gap between average men and women has not been fixed over time. Our World in Data notes that in the Philippines, the male-female height difference doubled over the century of birth cohorts, from about 7 cm to about 14 cm, while in South Korea it narrowed from 18 cm to 13 cm. Across all countries, NCD-RisC found men taller than women everywhere, by roughly 11 cm in the 1896 cohort and about 12 cm in the 1996 cohort. At 17.8 cm, this pair's gap is wider than any of those national averages.

Right at the edge of stated preferences

Surveys of ideal partner height produce an unexpected result for this pair: both people sit almost exactly at the average stated minimum for the opposite sex.

In a 2025 UK study in Human Nature, Alexandra Dial and Gillian Brown asked 242 heterosexual adults for their ideal, minimum and maximum acceptable partner heights. Women's mean minimum acceptable height for a male partner was 168.96 cm. A 5′7″ man at 170.18 cm clears it by about a centimeter. Men's mean minimum acceptable height for a female partner was 151.93 cm. A 5′0″ woman at 152.40 cm clears that by half a centimeter.

Averages hide a lot of variation, of course, and the participants were mostly UK adults aged 18 to 29, a population that is taller than the global average. Still, the coincidence makes a point: preference thresholds are set relative to the people around you. In the same study, women's mean ideal partner height was 181.23 cm and men's was 166.87 cm, both well above what this pair offers, yet the actual heights land inside the acceptable range on both sides.

Ratio versus ideal

The ratio for this pair is 1.117. Women in the Dial and Brown study had a mean ideal ratio of 1.10, and men 1.06. So the proportions here are close to the women's ideal, even though both absolute heights are below the participants' stated ideals. Proportion, not absolute height, is what people see when two partners stand side by side.

How often a 7-inch gap happens in real couples

Gert Stulp and colleagues analyzed 12,502 couples from the UK Millennium Cohort Study in a 2013 PLOS ONE paper. The average couple gap was 14.11 cm, with a standard deviation of 9.25 cm. The researchers compared the real distribution with thousands of simulated random pairings, and found that gaps between 5 and 20 cm were more common than chance would predict. In the 15 to 20 cm bin specifically, they counted 2,586 couples against a random-pairing median of 2,464, a modest but statistically significant excess.

The 5′0″ and 5′7″ pair, at 17.78 cm, falls right in that bin. In other words, this is one of the height differences that real couples slightly favor. The site's own estimate from US distributions suggests that if American women and men were paired at random, about 35% of couples would have the man at least 17.8 cm taller.

Not a universal pattern

Small-scale societies show that the preference for a taller man is not universal. Rebecca Sear and Frank Marlowe studied married couples among the Hadza foragers of Tanzania for a 2009 paper in Biology Letters. According to the study's abstract, they found no assortative mating for height, weight, body mass index or body fat, and no evidence of a male-taller norm; mating appeared to be random with respect to size, in contrast to post-industrial societies such as the UK couples Stulp studied.

A second small-scale society tells a similar story from a different angle. In a 2015 study of the Tsimane' of Bolivia, men averaged about 167 cm and women about 155 cm, very close to a 5′1″ woman and a 5′6″ man. Among 76 partnered individuals, the measured average ratio between husbands and wives was 1.07, and only three couples had a taller wife. Women's stated preferences there were spread almost evenly across the silhouette options, while men leaned toward larger gaps. The 5′0″ and 5′7″ pair's ratio of 1.117 would be on the more dimorphic side of a typical Tsimane' marriage.

Standing together: eyes, mouth and chin

As a rough picture rather than a measured figure, a 5′0″ person's head, topping out at 152.4 cm, comes up to somewhere around the taller partner's mouth or chin, and their eye lines sit close to the full 17.8 cm apart.

At about 76 cm, the boundary between the close and far phases of Edward T. Hall's personal-distance zone, that works out to an upward gaze of roughly 12° for the shorter person; at 46 cm, about 20°. In practice, that is a comfortable difference for conversation and a noticeable one in photos, where the shorter person's head usually lines up with the taller person's lower face.

Clothes, counters and shared spaces

At 5′0″, most women shop petite. US petite sizing is generally aimed at women under 5′4″, and the miss petite table covers heights from 5′1″ to 5′3″, so 5′0″ sits at or below the shortest reference figure. The junior petite table, designed for very short women, assumes 5′1″. Hemming trousers and shortening sleeves is common.

A 5′7″ man usually fits standard men's sizes, often in shorter inseams. Shared spaces are a small issue for this couple compared with taller pairings: a 17.8 cm difference means mirrors, showerheads and car seats need adjusting, but most fixtures set for the 5′7″ partner remain usable for the 5′0″ one with a step stool for top shelves.

Famous people at these heights

Celebrity heights are approximate. None of the people with pages on this site is listed at exactly 5′0″. Near 5′7″, Lionel Messi is listed at 169 cm and Tom Cruise at 170 cm. The lists generated above show more names at each height.

Comparing similar pairs

A one-inch change shifts this pairing noticeably. 5′1″ vs 5′7″ narrows the gap to 6 inches, and 5′0″ vs 6′0″ widens it to a full foot, putting the shorter person's head near the taller one's neck rather than mouth.

The same 7-inch gap also appears higher up the height scale. In 5′3″ vs 5′10″, both people sit close to the US averages for their sex, so the pair reads as typical rather than short. Proportionally, that couple is slightly closer together, a ratio of 1.111 against 1.117 here, because the same 17.8 cm is a smaller share of a taller body. Use the 3D button above to see this pair to scale, or open the height difference calculator to try your own numbers.