5′8″ in cm = 172.72 cm

The conversion: 5′8″ equals 172.72 cm

Five feet eight inches is 68 inches in total, because five feet contribute 60 inches and eight more make 68. At exactly 2.54 cm per inch, 68 inches is 172.72 cm, or 1.73 m to two decimal places. The US National Institute of Standards and Technology explains that the inch has been defined as exactly 0.0254 meters since the international yard agreement announced in 1959, so this figure is exact.

In whole centimeters, 5′8″ rounds to 173 cm, the number you will see on most metric profiles. The 0.28 cm of rounding is small, but it matters at the edges: 172 cm is 67.72 inches and 174 cm is 68.5 inches, so heights from roughly 171.5 to 173.9 cm all round to 5′8″. The metric side of this height is covered on the 173 cm page.

Where 5′8″ sits in the United States

The CDC's National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) measured US adults between August 2021 and August 2023, and the resulting report lists height percentiles by sex and age. Interpolating gives:

This is the height where the two sexes' distributions most clearly diverge. For men, 5′8″ is slightly below average: about 2.5 cm (1 inch) under the median of 175.2 cm, at roughly the 38th percentile. For men in their seventies, it is the median to within a fraction of a millimeter. For women, 5′8″ marks the top 5%: the 95th percentile for women aged 20 and over was 172.5 cm, just 2 millimeters below 5′8″. Among women in their twenties, about 8% reach it.

Comparisons across age groups within one survey blend two things, the height people lose gradually in later life and the shorter average stature of earlier birth cohorts. The height percentile calculator runs the same interpolation for any height and age band.

The start of tall sizing

If 5′4″ is the line where petite clothing ends, 5′8″ is where tall clothing begins. US women's sizing descriptions define tall sizes as made for taller women, usually 5′8″ or above, with a proportionately average bust height and an hourglass figure. They are labeled with the corresponding misses' size plus a T, as in 10T, and lengthen the inseam, sleeves and torso rather than the girth.

The boundary fits the national data neatly. Because roughly 95% of American women are shorter than 5′8″, the tall category serves a small slice of the market, which is part of why women at this height often say longer inseams are hard to find in stores. Men face the opposite situation: a 5′8″ man is slightly shorter than the median, and regular men's lengths usually fit with little or no alteration.

Modeling and the 5′8″ threshold

Fashion has its own height conventions, and 5′8″ is a recognized threshold. The British Association of Model Agents states that female models should be roughly 5′8″ (173 cm) to 5′11″ (180 cm). Many fashion agencies describe the typical female fashion model as 5′9″ and up. Male model norms sit higher: one widely cited career guide gives 5′11″ to 6′2″ for men. So a 5′8″ woman is at the bottom edge of runway height, while a 5′8″ man would usually be steered toward commercial or fitness work instead.

Precision dance has a similar history. When the Radio City Rockettes set their range at 5′5″ to 5′8″ in the mid-1960s, 5′8″ was the maximum. From then until 2022 the band was 5′6″ to 5′10½″, putting 5′8″ in the middle, and the current minimum is 5′5″.

Famous people listed at 5′8″

The site has more featured people at 172 to 173 cm than at almost any other height. With their own pages are actors Tom Holland, Robert Downey Jr. and Tobey Maguire, singers Rihanna and Dua Lipa, podcaster Joe Rogan, rapper DaBaby and actor Cillian Murphy. Holland, Rihanna, Lipa and Downey are listed at 173 cm; Rogan, Maguire and DaBaby at 172.7 cm; Murphy at 172 cm.

The wider catalog adds Emmanuel Macron and Pelé at 173 cm, Theresa May at 172.7 cm, Bruce Lee at 172 cm, and presidents James K. Polk and Zachary Taylor at 173 cm. Two Spider-Man actors, Holland and Maguire, being listed at the same height is a nice coincidence for comparison fans.

5′8″ in the world

The NCD Risk Factor Collaboration analyzed measured heights from more than 18.6 million people to estimate average adult height by birth year in 200 countries. For people born in 1996:

Iran is the most dramatic story in this table. NCD-RisC estimates that Iranian men gained 16.5 cm over the century studied, the largest increase among men anywhere. Iranian men born in 1896 averaged 157.1 cm; those born in 1996 average 173.6 cm, a little over 5′8″. No country's women average 5′8″ in the 1996 cohort; Latvian women, among the tallest, average 169.8 cm.

When 5′8″ was above average for American men

Today a 5′8″ American man is a little below the median, but that is a recent development. NCD-RisC's estimates for the United States show how the average moved across birth cohorts:

American men born in 1896 averaged 171.1 cm, about 5′7½″, so a 5′8″ man of that generation was slightly taller than most of his peers. By the 1926 cohort the average had passed 5′8″, and it has been roughly flat since the 1950s at about 177 cm. In China and South Korea, by contrast, 5′8″ moved from being well above average to roughly average within three generations. South Korean men born in 1896 averaged 159.8 cm; their great-grandsons born in 1996 average 174.9 cm. Across the same century, the NCD-RisC data show the US average for men barely changing after the 1956 cohort, while South Korean men added another 5.5 cm and Chinese men another 3.8 cm, steadily narrowing the gap with Americans.

The NHANES age groups show the tail end of that history. Men aged 70 to 79 in 2021–2023 had a median of 172.7 cm, the height of 5′8″ itself, while men in their twenties had a median of 176.1 cm.

Growing to 5′8″

The CDC 2000 stature-for-age charts, the US pediatric reference for ages 2 to 20, cross 172.72 cm at these ages:

• Boys, median: about 15 years 10 months.
• Boys, 95th percentile: about 13 years 6 months.
• Girls, 95th percentile: about 15 years 2 months.
• Girls, median: never; the median girl levels off at about 163.3 cm.

At age 20, 5′8″ equals about the 28th percentile for young men and the 93rd for young women. For an individual child, a pediatrician reading the full growth pattern is far more informative than any one milestone.

Being a 5′8″ woman in a couple

Couple-height studies help explain why tall women often notice partner height more than others do. In a study of more than 12,500 UK parent couples, Gert Stulp and colleagues found that taller women tended to have smaller height differences with their partners, and that the man was taller in 92.5% of couples. A 5′8″ woman stands taller than about 38% of American men, so the pool of men taller than her is smaller than for most women, and couples in which she is the taller partner are correspondingly more likely.

Stated preferences show the same direction. A 2022 cross-cultural study by Katarzyna Pisanski and colleagues, covering Canada, Cuba, Norway and the United States, found that people's own height positively predicted the height they preferred in a partner, for both women and men. The researchers also replicated the "male-taller norm," with participants on average preferring taller-than-average men and shorter-than-average women. Real couples follow these preferences only loosely, and the featured 5′8″ vs 6′2″ comparison shows one common pairing to scale.

Height and careers at 5′8″

Research on height and work finds a measurable but modest effect. A 2004 meta-analysis by Timothy Judge and Daniel Cable linked height with social esteem, leader emergence and job performance, and reported that height was positively related to income in four large samples after controlling for sex, age and weight. The association was somewhat stronger for men than for women, but the difference was not statistically significant. For a 5′8″ woman, the research would place her at the tall end of her peer group; for a 5′8″ man, slightly below the middle. In both cases the effect is an average over thousands of people, not a forecast for anyone's career.

In horse racing, 5′8″ is above the usual flat-jockey range of about 4′10″ to 5′7″, but jump racing is different: jump jockeys are often taller, with multiple examples over 5′10″.

Measuring and comparing 5′8″

Stand barefoot with heels, buttocks and shoulder blades against a wall, look straight ahead, and lower a flat, rigid object onto the top of your head; mark the wall and measure to the floor. Stature is slightly greater soon after waking: a study of schoolchildren in Southampton found an average loss of about half a centimeter over the morning, with little change after six hours out of bed, so a measurement taken in the middle of the day is the most repeatable. To see 5′8″ next to other heights, one inch down is 5′7″ (170.18 cm) and one inch up is 5′9″ (175.26 cm), the median American man; the height difference calculator shows any pairing to scale.