Average human height by country

Below are two tables which report the average adult human height by country or geographical region. With regard to the first table, original studies and sources should be consulted for details on methodology and the exact populations measured, surveyed, or considered. With regard to the second table, these estimated figures for adult human height for said countries and territories in 2019 and the declared sources may conflict with the findings of the first table.

Individual surveys and studies

Accuracy

As with any statistical data, the accuracy of the findings may be challenged. In this case, for the following reasons:

• Some studies may allow subjects to self-report values. Generally speaking, self-reported height tends to be taller than measured height, although the overestimation of height depends on the reporting subject's height, age, gender and region.
• Test subjects may have been invited instead of random sampling, resulting in sampling bias.
• Some countries may have significant height gaps between different regions. For instance, one survey shows there is difference in mean height between the tallest state and the shortest state in Germany. Under such circumstances, the mean height may not represent the total population unless sample subjects are appropriately taken from all regions with using weighted average of the different regional groups.
• Different social groups can show different mean height. According to a study in France, executives and professionals are taller, and university students are taller than the national average. As this case shows, data taken from a particular social group may not represent a total population in some countries.
• Height measurement can vary over the course of a day, due to factors such as a decrease from exercise done directly before measurement (i.e. inversely correlated), or an increase after lying down for a significant period of time (i.e. positively correlated). For example, one study revealed a mean decrease of in the heights of 100 children from getting out of bed in the morning to between 4 and 5 p.m. that same day. Such factors may not have been controlled in all of the following studies.
• It should be remembered that the stature of a man standing, in adult males, varies between the normal individual extremes of – and that can exist means results lower than (very short height) or ≥180–182 cm (about 6ft) (very tall height): but these extreme results are based on series "in which a choice has occurred, voluntarily or not".
• According to the geographical-anthropological study by Asutosh Goswami et al. (2023), 95% of the world global population has average statures between and .

Measured and self-reported figures

Note: where available, standard deviation (SD) is listed under sample population / age range

Estimated average height of 19-year-olds in 2019

Accuracy

As with any statistical data, the accuracy of the findings may be challenged. In this case, for the following reasons:

• The study does not use measured or self-reported data, rather it is an estimation based on a Bayesian hierarchical model to hypothesize the mean height increase from 1985 to 2019 based on the scale of previous height increases. As such, none of the measurements listed are based on empirical data, they are all estimates based on a statistical model. The researchers based this model on a linear model of increase, which assumes that the height increase of the previous century would continue the same trend, at the same rate. This has been critiqued by other researchers who have noted that the height increase of the previous century could be explained by better access to nutrition, and as such there would be a plateau rather than a constant linear increase, meaning the heights listed in the table could be significantly higher than measured height. 1,344 academics having collated the results of 2,181 studies covering 65 million people. Their findings are based on selected material rather than all available.
• The table and diagrams of this subsection are reliant on one singular publication which in turn cites surveys that are largely not available to the public because the public has no free access to them (e.g. mean height, median, percentiles, standard deviation, background factors, etc.).

Estimated figures

Countries and territories are sorted according to the average of the male and female mean height:

Notes

References