Nations that are taller tend to be wealthier and in better health. Find out why else the OECD use it as an indicator of a country’s well-being

Humans were taller in almost every part of the world at the end of the 1980s than they were at the start of the 20th century.

Average height over time. Data source: OECD via Clio Infra

We have found this out because a new OECD report uses human height as one of its measures of well-being and has gathered the relevant data to illustrate the trend.

At first glance, height as an indicator of life quality seems a bit strange and possibly insulting to those of us with shorter statures.

However, a tall population usually exists when a country’s health and underlying factors such as nutrition are in good order. Those in a nation with a higher protein diet will be somewhat more likely to have a larger average height.



The wealthiest tend to be taller than the poorest income groups (a trend that is consistent across nations). Getting the right food and healthcare is less of an issue if you have money so it stands to reason.

The heady history of height

Europe started the 1800s as a short continent but by the 1980s it was one of the world’s tallest regions. The exception to this was the UK where people were historically quite tall. Nevertheless, British children grew at a smaller rate than before during the industrial revolution, bringing the average height more into line with the country’s European cousins.



Height growth was particularly strong in both western and eastern Europe in the latter 1800s as more socialist states (with welfare arrangements) started to come into existence, but that dropped back in the latter when the USSR came to power.



The new world, such as the US and Australia, had a head start on the Europeans. They retained the height of their UK forefathers, helped out by good food supplies in their new homes.

Since then Europe and other western nations have had rises in average height that far outpaced most other regions. Literal growth had started to become as uneven as economic growth.

GDP per capita and height - a complex relationship

Chart: OECD

Richer countries (those with higher GDP per capita) are generally taller. Although this trend flattens out at the more developed end of the spectrum - in other words, being rich will only take you so far.

When you put this data on a time series and look at whether a country’s height increases in direct proportion to its GDP per capita, the correlation is again pretty strong.

The growth in height inequality was at its most severe during the 1940s and 1950s, which was also the highest growth point for income inequality between nations.

Causation is tricky to establish though as wealthier countries are generally healthier, more literate, eat more and have better infrastructure. Health is the closest correlate to height but all these indicators are tied up together.

For example, nations such as China were dealing with government suppression and conflicts that set back their development and probably had an effect on the rate at which average heights increased.

The OECD marks the 1980s as a turning point when the height inequality between nations began to flatten out, although some gaps still exist. The average height of people in Africa has been going down during the past two decades.

A lot more research could be done in this area but if you are on holiday in another country and you notice how tall the people are around you, it’s probably a good way of telling whether their economy has been doing well.