
A century of trends in adult human height - abhi3
https://elifesciences.org/content/5/e13410
======
talideon
That's rather interesting. A little bit of anecdote: I'm Irish and come in at
about 170cm. When I was younger and in college (around 2000), I was definitely
just (and we're talking 1/2cm here) ever so slightly slightly above the norm,
but now I'm definitely below it by most of a head. My generation was the last
one that grew up in a relatively 'poor' Ireland, and I'm significantly taller
than my father was. It'd be interesting to see that study with data from 2016.

Edit: added some extra text to help quantify the difference I see.

~~~
muddyrivers
Similar things happened in China. I was the last generation that grew up in
poor China, in the sense that we were malnourished without sufficient intake
of animal proteins when growing up (to be accurate, it is before we were 13~14
years old. After that, the living standard got a big jump.) Among ~200 of high
school classmates who talk regularly with each other in a WeChat group, some
have children of 16 years old or older. They all said their children are
already much taller and stronger than they are.

------
zkhalique
"Being taller is associated with enhanced longevity, lower risk of adverse
pregnancy outcomes and cardiovascular and respiratory diseases, and higher
risk of some cancers"

Didn't I read just the opposite in an article on Hacker News just a few hours
ago? It claimed that researchers were mistaken in the past, yet the studies
cited here are from the past 10 years.

[http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/201...](http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2013/07/height_and_longevity_the_research_is_clear_being_tall_is_hazardous_to_your.html)

[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1071721/](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1071721/)

More balanced:

[http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal....](http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0094385)

~~~
Artlav
Makes sense even on the naive level.

The heart has to work harder, so the heart problems.

Body volume is larger, therefore more chances for cancer.

~~~
Pica_soO
The solution seems obvious- we need a second heart. And enhanced ribcages to
hold it

~~~
Artlav
The scariest thing is, it's only a matter of time before some biohacker would
make this a reality.

~~~
smhost
The last I checked, they were surgically inserting magnets into their
fingertips. Has there been any progress in the community?

------
scholia
American men were third tallest in 1914 and 37th tallest in 2014.

The growth in the height of American men is the same as Mali, and similar to
Burkina Faso. Senegal did better.

Shouldn't the world's richest nation be doing better?

PS There's a story that's easier to read at
[https://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/jul/26/tall-
story-m...](https://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/jul/26/tall-story-men-
and-women-have-grown-taller-over-last-century-study-shows)

The Guardian story says: "European countries now scoop the top 10 positions
for height, with Dutch men and Latvian women the tallest for their sex. That,
says Bentham (1), could be down to the introduction of a welfare state in many
European countries."

(1) co-author of the research from Imperial College, London

~~~
rubber_duck
>The Guardian story says: "European countries now scoop the top 10 positions
for height, with Dutch men and Latvian women the tallest for their sex. That,
says Bentham (1), could be down to the introduction of a welfare state in many
European countries."

That fails to consider the obvious explanation - you are comparing small EU
countries with low ethnic diversity, uniform lifestyle and high standard of
living with stringent immigration to a huge ethnically diverse country with a
huge immigration flow.

~~~
tormeh
The netherlands have stringent immigration rules? Better call that news
hotline!

Anyway, uniform ethnicity does lead to extremes. If the entire world moved to
Latvia then it follows that Latvian women would obviously be of average
height.

------
amarka
>Being taller is associated with enhanced longevity

I thought most researched suggested the opposite (ex
[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1071721/](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1071721/))

~~~
svachalek
And with higher earnings and education, it says, which smells a lot like
they're not trying to isolate it as a factor. I'm pretty sure they could add
that taller people are better at speaking English and get more vacation time
than shorter people.

------
gwern
Keep in mind that there are a lot of racial and between-country differences in
genetic height & weight: "Population genetic differentiation of height and
body mass index across Europe"
[http://www.gwern.net/genetics/docs/genetics/2015-robinson.pd...](http://www.gwern.net/genetics/docs/genetics/2015-robinson.pdf)
, Robinson et al 2015. So the Dutch are so tall in part because of their
excellent social net and public health, yes, but they're still taller than
some other comparable countries and that's reflecting genetics. As the
environments improve, genetics becomes the limiting factor.

------
honkhonkpants
World Wide Web, what happened to you? This article has figures and when you
click on the figure, you get an animated light box and an animated progress
spinner and then you are presented with a figure that's smaller than the
original unreadable version you clicked in the first place. The WWW is
supposed to be an information system, not a pile of useless animations.

/rant

~~~
cwbrandsma
Click the image, then use the "Open in new window" link at the bottom. (yes,
still a pain)

------
passive
I briefly read the domain as elfsciences.org and imagined a very different
article.

~~~
overcast
Well, it is related slightly regarding height. Overall disappointing domain
name :)

~~~
lsh
we briefly considered constraining the scope of our published science to elves
and the fey folk but the projected volume of submissions was disappointingly
small and the board nixed it early. Refactoring the journal code from
'elfsciences.org' to 'elifesciences.org' was seen as an easy win for
everybody.

true story.

------
coldcode
Being 2m tall the only place I am below average height is NBA games. My father
was 1.8m and his father was around 1.6 which covers the whole previous century
and then some. Of course this is purely anecdotal. I wonder how many there are
where the trend is reversed.

------
pimlottc
Interactive versions of the data visualizations are available on the NCD RisC
website:

[http://www.ncdrisc.org/v-height.html](http://www.ncdrisc.org/v-height.html)

------
DisposableMike
A single population group (South Korean women) with an average height increase
of 20.2cm over 100 years is absolutely astounding (that's 8 inches for those
of you using freedom units). That signifies an enormous improvement in
nutrition and healthcare in a relatively short amount of time.

------
dumbmatter
I wonder if Guatemalan women were really shorter than African pygmies, or they
just didn't have data on pygmies. Either way, seems strange to write a long
article about extreme heights and not even mention pygmies.

~~~
drpgq
I'm guessing no data on pygmies. Probably no pygmy army conscription.

------
Artlav
Interesting.

I read previously that tallness is fairly dependent on good nutrition, which
would correlate with overall increase in welfare/quality of life.

------
UVDMAS
Can someone correlate this with economic growth?

~~~
strictnein
Maybe

