Why vertically challenged men get the short end of the stick when it comes to marriage

In 92.5 per cent of British couples husband are taller than their wives, research shows

Women were taller in only 4 per cent of the couples studied, while partners of equal height were even rarer

Previous research has shown that women prefer taller men and vice versa but this is the first study to see how this pans out in real life



(File picture) Research has found that, not surprisingly, that in the vast majority of British couples, the man was taller

Vertically challenged men get the short end of the stick when it comes to marriage - according to research which shows husbands overwhelmingly tend to be taller than their wives.

Information on thousands of British couples revealed, not surprisingly, that in the vast majority - 92.5 per cent - the man was taller.

Women had the edge in only 4 per cent of the couples investigated and couples of equal height were even rarer, making up the remaining 3.5 per cent.

However, the results didn't simply reflect the average difference in height between men and women - if the couples had been randomly paired between men and women in the data then wives would have been taller than their husbands in 6 per cent of cases.



British and Dutch researchers used data on more than 12,000 families from around the UK to look at height differences.

The average height of the women studied was 5ft 4.5in, while the average man reached 5ft 10in – making him 5.5in taller than the woman in his life.

The study, one of the first to look at couples, noted previous research which has shown that women prefer taller men and men prefer their women to be shorter.

However, it seems that women don’t like their men to be too tall. In just around one in seven cases was the man 10in or more taller than the woman.

And, in an exception to the rule, very tall men tended to settle down with short women.

Newcastle University researcher Professor Daniel Nettle, said this may because at the extremes of height simply have less choice.

Professor Nettle, who collaborated with Gert Stulp, from the University of Groningen in the Netherlands, said that it is likely that those of around average height pair off first, simply because they have more choice.

This leaves the others with fewer potential partners to pick from.

'Pair formation, acquiring a mate to form a reproductive unit, is a complex process. Mating preferences are a step in this process,' the researchers said in the study published in the journal PloS One this month.

'Mating preferences, the propensity to mate with certain phenotypes, are an important part of pair formation.

'However, due to constraining factors such as availability of mates, rival competition, and mutual mate choice, preferred characteristics may not be realised in the actual partner.'

The theory chimes with previous research from Mr Stulp that found that men of average height tend to father more children than their taller counterparts.



Specifically, those of a middling 5ft 10.5in had 2.6 children, while one those who towered above them at 6ft 5in sired just 2.17 children, on average.



The study also found women don¿t like their men to be too tall. In just around one in seven cases was the man 10 inches or more taller than the woman

Philip Cohen, professor of sociology at the University of Maryland, looked at similar data in the U.S. and found the same trends occurred there.



He downloaded the 2009 Panel Study of Income Dynamics, a U.S. survey that includes height reported for 4,600 married couples.



Looking at the height distributions for those couples he found a median difference of six inches.



Data from the 2009 Panel Study of Income Dynamics, a U.S. survey that includes height for 4,600 couples, showed that there the average husband's height was 5ft 11in while the average wife was 5ft 5in

Professor Cohen explained that if the same people in the data set married at random, it could be expected that the husband would be taller most of the time, and that is what he did find.



Plotting the results on a graph, he explained in an article in The Atlantic that the most common arrangement is the husband five to six inches taller.



Only a small minority of couples — 3.8 per cent — were on the left side of the red line on Professor Cohen's graph, indicating a taller wife.



Only a small minority of couples - 3.8 per cent - are on the left side of the red line on the graph, indicating a taller wife

But randomising the data showed that if couples were paired by chance alone 7.8 per cent had a taller wife

To find out whether this was because people are deliberately looking for taller-husband-shorter-wife pairings, Professor Cohen compared the actual distribution with a randomised outcome.



To do this he made 10 copies of all the men and women in the data, scrambled them up, and paired them at random. Most couples still had a taller husband, but 7.8 per cent had a taller wife - nearly twice as many as in the actual results.



Superimposing the two sets of data in a new graph showed that there are more couples than one would expect by chance where a man is from the same height up to 7-8in taller.



And below same-height - where the woman is taller - is seen more rarely in the population as would be expected if couples were paired at random.



This final graph superimposes the distribution of the actual and randomised results

Professor Cohen comments: 'Humans could couple up differently, if they wanted to. If it were desirable to have a taller-woman-shorter-man relationship, it could be much more common.

