"Within the course of the 20th century the American population went through a metamorphosis from being the tallest in the world, to being among the most overweight. The American height advantage over Western and Northern Europeans was between 3-9 cm in the middle of the 19th century. Americans were also underweight. However, today, the exact opposite is the case as the Dutch, Swedes, and Norwegians are the tallest, and the Danes, British and Germans -- even the East-Germans -- are also taller, towering over the Americans by as much as 3-7 cm.
Americans also live shorter. The hypothesis is worth considering that this adverse development is related to the greater social inequality, an inferior health-care system, and fewer social safety nets in the United States than in Western and Northern Europe, in spite of higher per capita income. The West- and Northern European welfare states, with cradle to grave health and unemployment insurance currently provide a more propitious environment for the biological standard of living than its US counterpart."

Bibliography: Komlos, John. "From the Tallest in the World to (One
of) the Fattest: The Enigmatic Fate of the Size of the American
Population in the Twentieth Century."

Statistically "Tall"
Because of the bell curve used to compare height, men 6 foot to 6ft3 are considered "tall". Judging by government safety regulations and industry's standardized sizing, everyone 6ft4 and over is considered statistically irrelevant. When allocating space for car, bus, train and plane passengers, and considering life-jackets or other emergency equipment, people over 6ft4 are ignored completely.

from The Height Site

Richard Steckel '66 is an auxologist and professor of economics and anthropology at The Ohio State University, where he has been studying height since his doctoral years in the mid-1970s. In March, he was among three faculty members named Joan N. Huber Faculty Fellows, a program designed to reward the strongest scholars in the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences.

Steckel says that traditional measures of standard of living-gross national product or per capita income-don't reflect the total picture because they leave out other variables such as crime, congestion, workload, or the amount of leisure time afforded to a population. Height also has a direct relationship to longevity; research suggests that the height of a child at age 12 has a direct correlation with life expectancy as an adult. Per capita income can't make the same claim.

"Americans have not grown in 25 years," Steckel said. "Our loss of international leadership in stature should be a warning to those who think this country provides its citizens with widespread access to the basic necessities of life."

Steckel's research is derived in part from historical height data recorded on slave manifests of those shipped in the coastwide trade after 1807 and military muster roles from major wars. "Among the things we learned is that slave children were dreadfully small, among the smallest populations ever measured, but recovered substantially as teenagers," Steckel said. "Pregnant slave women had an arduous work routine, and their children as infants had a limited rate of breast feedings. Women were back in the fields within six weeks of giving birth, and the children left behind in the nursery were receiving a contaminated, low protein diet until age 10.

"Once the young adolescent slaves started working, however, they received regular allocations of meat and their growth caught up. This proved to be economically productive for slave owners. They had no incentive to improve the diets of young children nor to improve their health or welfare."

From a medical point of view, the findings make sense, Steckel said. Under periods of extreme physical stress, our bodies give up on growth and marshal whatever resources they have on survival. Later, during times of less stress, the body makes up for what's lost-a phenomenon known as catch-up growth.

"Stress and poor environmental conditions can depress growth rates down to zero," he said. "Diet, minus work and minus disease (and basic metabolism) equals net nutrition. How tall one becomes is a function of net nutrition during periods of growth. Average height is not adept in distinguishing between degrees of opulence, but is good at distinguishing between degrees of deprivation. In other words, it's a measure of one's consumption of basic needs."

In the early 1700s soldiers in the United States were the tallest in the world, attributed, most likely, to a healthy diet and an abundance of farmlands. "Americans experienced the best of the old and the new world foods at that time, and also had low population density, few epidemics, and a reasonably even distribution of wealth," Steckel said.

Average height for Americans peaked in the 1830s, then sharply declined toward a new low in 1880 (Chart 1). "Americans lost 1-1/2 to 2 inches in height despite an improving economy and increases in income," Steckel said. "But we also had a greater spread of communicable disease as the United States urbanized. The transportation revolution in the 1820s and '30s brought steamboats, canals, and railroads. People moved and migrated, taking disease with them: cholera, scarlet fever, whooping cough. Wealth inequality was also on the rise and the poor were more exposed by business downturns. Things didn't get better until the end of the century with the purification of water, removal of waste, emphasis on personal hygiene, and use of antiseptics, after which point we saw an increase of eight centimeters in height in the next three-quarters of a century."

Many Europeans, whose heights once lagged several centimeters behind Americans, caught up, eventually surpassed, and continued rising. In the United States, however, height began levelling off in the mid-1900s, and, in the last 25 years, experienced no increase at all. This is a warning, says Steckel, since the majority of growth occurs in early childhood and adolescence. He believes it highly probable that a significant number of our country's children face some type of impaired health. And because an average height difference of just a few centimeters across countries can have a significant effect on life expectancy, the longevity of our population is at risk.

An educated guess as to our loss in stature might allude to malnutrition and meager access to health care that occur today in inner-cities and scattered rural areas-places where basic biological needs are not being met.

In Europe and Asia, heights have continued to grow very quickly and people are starting to ask why. The topic was explored in an October 1996 TIME magazine cover story, in which Steckel and other auxologists examined the impact on various European populations. Is there an ideal height? Is there a limit to how tall humans can grow? Can shorter populations catch up?

"The Dutch are currently tallest, measuring about two inches taller than Americans," Steckel said. "Why? They have very high income levels, they have perhaps the best pre-natal and post-natal care in the world, and they have a relatively equal distribution of income."

In Norway a survey by professor Hans Waaler revealed that tall people live longer: women aged 40 to 44 who measured between 145 and 149 centimeters had a mortality rate double that of women between 165 and 169 centimeters. Norwegian men aged 55 to 59 who measured 150 to 155 centimeters had double the mortality rate of those whose height was 185 to 189 centimeters.

Even the Japanese, who were the smallest in height of any industrialized country in 1950, have increased their height by about eight centimeters in the last 50 years. "If you're in Asia today, the intergenerational differences in height are striking," Steckel said.

The growth of our European and Asian neighbors suggests positive change, yet the trend is leading to unique challenges for manufacturing industries. Changes have been so dramatic that clothing, cars, furniture, and tools need to be redesigned, and the architecture of homes, schools, and offices must be adapted for these larger physiques.

"Americans tend to think that height is genetically determined," Steckel continued. "And the people who believe that often lack a strong liberal arts background that includes some study in the sciences. We know that environment can cause five- or six-inch differences in height. I've heard physical anthropologists say that even the African pygmies would catch up to modern heights over three or four generations if they had good net nutrition."

Steckel is convinced that Americans have something to learn by studying other countries and suggests that we regularly measure our children to help monitor health conditions. It's cheap, it's easy, and it's effective.

"I've asked geneticists how long it will be before we can estimate the genetic potential for growth of particular individuals. We can take a blood sample or a mouth swab, get your DNA, determine your height, and conclude how tall you should end up. If we know each person's growth potential and discover that they're falling below that, then we know something is wrong.

"Then we can design personal diets for people: you need extra protein, I need more iodine, she needs additional iron to grow adequately," he said. "This would revolutionize pediatrics, and the technology should be available in five to ten years. We know that health in early childhood is a predictor of longevity, so this is the time to intervene."

excerpt from Tall Tales: New Approaches to the Standard of Living
by Richard Steckel '66