The highest and the lowest in the world

The highest in the world today are the Dutch, one meter and 83 on average, the lowest in the people of East Timor, with an average of one meter and sixty. Among women the distinction belongs to the Latvian with 170 centimeters, while in the bottom of the female list are Guatemalan, at an altitude of 149 cm.


These are the figures that emerge from the wider global human height evolution study, conducted by an international network of 800 researchers in 179 countries, the NCD Risk Factor Collaboration, in collaboration with the World Health Organization, and just presented to ESOF2016, the forum on European research which is held these days in Manchester.
This particular humanity photograph was made by collecting measurements from many sources - from epidemiological studies to the military visits - a total of 18.6 million people over a century, with 1914 and 2014 as reference points.

THE HEIGHT OF THE CLASS 1896. Over a century ago, in 1914, the countries in which the average height was higher (measured at 18, that is, for those born in 1896) were the Scandinavian countries, the United States and Canada. The average for men in Sweden, then in the top list of the highest was 172 cm.

Lower men were the inhabitants of the South-East Asian countries: the smallest ever those of Laos, with 153 cm. In 1914 the highest women were the Swedes (average height 160 cm), while the lowest women Guatemala (140 cm, as a 10 year old now considered normal stature). Refer to the period, or the minimum or the maximum is a surprise: risaputi confirm facts, even at the level of popular knowledge.

THE RADICAL CHANGE. To have made, in a hundred years, the steps "at the top" most surprising were unexpected countries. For men, the record goes to Iran, where there was an increase of 16.5 cm, while for women it is the primacy of South Korea, where the gain was even 20 centimeters. Among the countries where the height increase was still significant then there are Greenland, Japan, Greece, Spain and Turkey for men, and even Greenland, Greece, Poland for women.



HEIGHT AND HEALTH. The study also provides an indirect measure of the health of the world's nations. "Studies show that taller people have a higher life expectancy, due mainly to a lower cardiovascular risk," said Elio Riboli, an epidemiologist at Imperial College London and one of the study authors, "and there are also some evidence that stature has an effect on the level of education and income. "in other words, the higher would have greater success in professional life. On the downside, the stature would instead be linked to a higher risk of certain cancers.