Why people are getting taller all over the world
Did you notice it already? Population height is increasing all over the world. The US once had the tallest people of all, but now have to cede first place to the Dutch men. The Netherlands are sporting an average of 6 feet which is slightly higher than their counterparts in Belgium, Estonia, Latvia and Denmark respectively.
A recent study shows exactly that in most countries males and females are getting taller.
To get into more detail — men born in 1996 surpass average heights of 181 cm in all of the aforementioned countries with Dutch men, at 182.5 cm (180.6–184.5), being the tallest people on the planet. Then there’s also a gap with the shortest countries — namely Timor-Leste, Yemen and Laos, where men are only ~160 cm tall (– 22–23 cm). Surprisingly that’s an increase of ~4 cm on the global gap. Australia was the only non-European country where men born in 1996 were among the 25 tallest in the world. If you look at the Women born in 1996 Guatemala comes in ‘last’, with an average height of 149.4 cm (148.0–150.8), being shorter than 151 cm in the Philippines, Bangladesh and Nepal. Once again the tallest women live in Europe, especially in Latvia, the Netherlands, Estonia and the Czech Republic with average heights surpassing 168 cm (that’s 5 feet 6 inches), again creating a 20 cm global gap in women’s height.
Of course there’s more to the study as greater height in adulthood proves to be both beneficially (cardiovascular and respiratory diseases) and harmfully (colorectal, postmenopausal breast and ovarian cancers, and possibly pancreatic, prostate and premenopausal breast cancers). Great height is also associated with several diseases, independently of its inverse correlation with BMI.
The ~20 cm height range in the world is verifiably associated with a 17% lower risk of cardiovascular mortality and 20–40% higher risk of various site-specific cancers, in tall versus short countries.
The pace of growth in height has obviously not been uniform over the past century. We have an impressive rise in height in Japan that suddenly stopped in people born after the early 1960s. In South Korea, the flattening began in the cohorts born in the 1980s for men and is believed to have just begun in women. As a result, South Korean men and women are now taller than their Japanese counterparts. Then there’s a continuing rise in other East and Southeast Asian countries like China and Thailand. Chinese men and women have surpassed the Japanese only recently, but are not yet as tall as South Koreans. We most likely have also seen a plateau in South Asian countries like Bangladesh and India, but at much lower levels than in East Asia, e.g., 5–10 cm shorter than in Japan and South Korea.
Increases in European men’s heights in the 19th and 20th century have been ongoing and highlighted above. The study found that the largest gains since the 1896 birth cohort occurred in South Korean women and Iranian men, who became 20.2 cm (17.5–22.7) and 16.5 cm (13.3–19.7) taller, respectively. As a result, South Korean women moved from the fifth shortest to the top group of tallest women in the world over the last 100 years. Men in South Korea also had large gains in relation to other countries, by 15.2 cm (12.3–18.1). Besides the massive gains in height in Japan, Greenland, some countries in Southern Europe (e.g., Greece) and Central Europe (e.g., Serbia and Poland, and for women Czech Republic) also gained substantially. In contrast, there was little gain in height in many countries in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. On average the world is about 3 to 4 inches taller. The countries with most gains at 5 to 6 inches taller versus low gainers at 1 to 2 inches.
What to make of all the information? The data can now be used to improve nutrition and health across the world. It will also be valuable to understand how much becoming taller has been responsible for improved health and longevity throughout the world in general.
This article was originally published on pionic.
