A century of trends in adult human height

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...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Author: NCD Risk Factor Collaboration, (NCD-RisC)
Format: Article
Language:en
Published: 2016
Subjects:
Online Access:http://eprints.usm.my/35732/1/Foo_LH_eLife.13410_2016.pdf
http://eprints.usm.my/35732/
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1834500768764264448
author NCD Risk Factor Collaboration, (NCD-RisC)
author_facet NCD Risk Factor Collaboration, (NCD-RisC)
author_sort NCD Risk Factor Collaboration, (NCD-RisC)
building Hamzah Sendut Library
collection Institutional Repository
content_provider Universiti Sains Malaysia
content_source USM Institutional Repository
continent Asia
country Malaysia
description 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 (13.2– 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.
format Article
id my.usm.eprints.35732
institution Universiti Sains Malaysia
language en
publishDate 2016
record_format eprints
spelling my.usm.eprints.35732 http://eprints.usm.my/35732/ A century of trends in adult human height NCD Risk Factor Collaboration, (NCD-RisC) RA0421 Public health. Hygiene. Preventive Medicine 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 (13.2– 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. 2016 Article PeerReviewed application/pdf en http://eprints.usm.my/35732/1/Foo_LH_eLife.13410_2016.pdf NCD Risk Factor Collaboration, (NCD-RisC) (2016) A century of trends in adult human height. eLife. pp. 1-29.
spellingShingle RA0421 Public health. Hygiene. Preventive Medicine
NCD Risk Factor Collaboration, (NCD-RisC)
A century of trends in adult human height
title A century of trends in adult human height
title_full A century of trends in adult human height
title_fullStr A century of trends in adult human height
title_full_unstemmed A century of trends in adult human height
title_short A century of trends in adult human height
title_sort century of trends in adult human height
topic RA0421 Public health. Hygiene. Preventive Medicine
url http://eprints.usm.my/35732/1/Foo_LH_eLife.13410_2016.pdf
http://eprints.usm.my/35732/
url_provider http://eprints.usm.my/