It turns out the story is more nuanced than it first appears. And for the explanation (more later) I'm grateful to Stephen Hall, the author of a new book, Size Matters: How Height Affects the Health, Happiness and Success of Boys - and the Men They Become. Society's prejudice against short people (they "got no reason to live" Randy Newman sang) needs to be dismantled. Unlike discrimination on grounds of gender, age and race, heightism is not acknowledged as a problem. And yet when academics do the numbers, short people always come up … short. One study found discrimination against the short was worse than sex and race discrimination.

People unconsciously ascribe nice qualities to the tall. Even before a tall person utters a word, people think they know something about him or her. They are deemed more worthy, dependable, intelligent and authoritative, myriad studies show. In short, they have "stature". It once was advantageous to be a short woman. You were considered cute, perky or sweet; you had the pick of the overlooked small boys as well as the basketball players and ruckmen. But these qualities are of diminishing value with age. They won't get you a seat on the board, or the CEO's job, that sort of thing. I would be as rich as a tall person if I had a dollar for every time a reader of my columns on meeting me said: "I thought you'd be taller." It seems a person who makes a living through expressing her opinions should have the height to go with it. That's because small-minded people confuse a lack of height with a lack of authority. It is something short men have always known. Look at how John Howard was mocked for years as "little Johnny Howard" and underestimated by his opponents even though at 176.5 centimetres he is about average height. His political success is even more fascinating given he has beaten much taller men. In the US, the taller presidential candidate usually wins. "What chance does a 5 foot 7 inch [170 centimetres] billionaire Jew who is divorced really have of becoming president?" the New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg recently joked. The subsequent discussion focused on the barrier of his height.

It is Hall's contention that height affects how boys develop, the way people treat them, the games they play, the spouses they choose, the respect they command and the salaries they receive. But it is his height at about age 16, one study found, that later determined a man's salary. No matter how tall boys later become, the undersized adolescent may never escape his "inner shrimp", the cartoonist Garry Trudeau - whose late growth spurt took him over six feet (183 centimetres) - once said. For some adolescent boys shortness causes emotional anguish. The growth spurt is too little and too late. And it is one problem parents can't fix.

Yet it also seems that most short boys develop qualities that carry them through. Indeed there is evidence it is adults, not children, who have a complex about size. A major study by the University of Buffalo found a child's stature had minimal detectable impact on their social standing among their mates in high school. Even the very short showed no signs of psychological problems. It is entirely possible short boys, given survival skills they may need to cultivate, turn out to be nicer than the average alpha male. It is not short men who are lacking. It is society's attitude that is the problem; if women and bosses spurn shorter men for the wrong reasons it's their loss. As for the intellectual superiority of tall people, it is not what it seems. The real story goes like this: height is determined not only by genes but by the nutrition we get in the womb and in early childhood. A nourishing early environment allows us to reach our genetic potential in height - and in intelligence. And so someone who is 182 centimetres but might have been 188 centimetres with better early nutrition may be dumber than someone who was healthy and well-fed in childhood, and reached their genetic potential, and stands at 167 centimetres.

All children deserve the chance to reach their optimum height, and if that turns out to be on the small side, the chances are, in spite of society's prejudices, they'll thrive.