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A century of trends in adult human height

Bentham, James (2016) A century of trends in adult human height. eLife, 5 . Article Number e13410. ISSN 2050-084X. E-ISSN 2050-084X. (doi:10.7554/eLife.13410.001) (KAR id:64443)

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.

Item Type: Article
DOI/Identification number: 10.7554/eLife.13410.001
Subjects: Q Science
Divisions: Divisions > Division of Computing, Engineering and Mathematical Sciences > School of Mathematics, Statistics and Actuarial Science
Depositing User: James Bentham
Date Deposited: 15 Nov 2017 14:05 UTC
Last Modified: 04 Mar 2024 17:33 UTC
Resource URI: https://kar.kent.ac.uk/id/eprint/64443 (The current URI for this page, for reference purposes)

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