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A century of trends in adult human height.

Published version
Peer-reviewed

Type

Article

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Authors

NCD Risk Factor Collaboration (NCD-RisC) 

Abstract

Being taller is associated with enhanced longevity, and higher education and earnings. We reanalysed 1472 population-based studies, with measurement of height on more than 18.6 million participants to estimate mean height for people born between 1896 and 1996 in 200 countries. The largest gain in adult height over the past century has occurred in South Korean women and Iranian men, who became 20.2 cm (95% credible interval 17.5-22.7) and 16.5 cm (13.3-19.7) taller, respectively. In contrast, there was little change in adult height in some sub-Saharan African countries and in South Asia over the century of analysis. The tallest people over these 100 years are men born in the Netherlands in the last quarter of 20th century, whose average heights surpassed 182.5 cm, and the shortest were women born in Guatemala in 1896 (140.3 cm; 135.8-144.8). The height differential between the tallest and shortest populations was 19-20 cm a century ago, and has remained the same for women and increased for men a century later despite substantial changes in the ranking of countries.

Description

Keywords

biological sciences, epidemiology, global health, medical research, none, nutrition, Adult, Body Height, Global Health, Humans

Journal Title

Elife

Conference Name

Journal ISSN

2050-084X
2050-084X

Volume Title

5

Publisher

eLife Sciences Publications, Ltd
Sponsorship
MRC (MC_PC_13048)
Department of Health (via National Institute for Health Research (NIHR)) (NF-SI-0512-10135)
Medical Research Council (MC_UU_12015/1)
MRC (5PV0E)
Medical Research Council (G0401527)
Medical Research Council (G1000143)
Medical Research Council (MR/N003284/1)
Medical Research Council (G0401527/1)
Medical Research Council (MC_PC_13048)