Study finds how human height has changed over past century

Over the past century, adult human height has changed substantially and varied vastly by country, with Dutch men and Latvian women listed as the world's tallest people, according to a new study released this week.

The study also reveals that South Korean women and Iranian men have registered the largest gains in adult height, becoming 20.2 cm and 16.5 cm taller respectively.

The study, published in the journal eLife, reanalyzed a large number of population-based data sources from all regions of the world, to estimate the mean height for people born between 1896 and 1996 in 200 countries.

Researchers found that the upward trend in human height is continuing in East and Southeast Asian countries like China and Thailand, with Chinese men and women having surpassed the Japanese, gaining around 11 cm and 10 cm respectively.

In contrast to East Asia's impressive gains, the rise in height seems to have plateaued early in South Asia, and even reversed in Africa.

The United States was one of the first wealthy countries to plateau, followed by others including Britain, Finland and Japan.

The 800 scientists from the NCD Risk Factor Collaboration who conducted the research suggested in the paper that there is a need to better understand the differences in height changes so as to further help improve nutrition and health across the world. Endi