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In the U.S., the average height for women is 5 feet 3.5 inches, and it ranges from 4 feet 11 inches to 5 feet 7 inches around the world
Based on data collected from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services from 2015 to 2018, the average height for women in the United States was 5 feet 3.5 inches.
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Depending on your ethnicity and genetic background, the average height for women continues to shift. Non-Hispanic Black women in the U.S., for example, have an average height of 5 feet 4 inches, while non-Hispanic Asian women in the U.S. and Mexican-American women have an average height of 5 feet 1.5 inches.
To factor female height averages from around the world, the Non-Communicable Disease Risk Factor Collaboration pooled together data from 2,181 population-based studies with 65 million participants in 200 countries and territories to find the following in 2020:
Around the world, the average height for women varies widely, changing from one region to the next and within different countries, drawing up some unique comparisons:
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It’s important to note that these are only averages calculated to estimate the overall height of women in each location. These measurements don’t mean that you should strive to achieve these measurements. But there’s still a lot that we can gauge from height and the heights of those who live around us.
Family medicine specialist Jeffrey Brown, DO, explains the importance of height for women’s health and how these measurements might impact your goals for your overall health and well-being.
Your height is largely determined by genetics and environmental factors. Like the color of your skin or the color of your eyes, your height is a hereditary trait that’s passed down from your biological parents and their parents before them. That means that if both of your parents have a shorter stature, you’re more likely to be shorter as well.
Other environmental and socioeconomic factors can have an impact on your height and development, including access to nutrition and medical care.
When we’re young, our bodies need nutrients to survive and thrive. As we grow and hit certain developmental milestones, we experience periods of growth spurts where we go through physical changes that affect our height and weight.
Without the right amount of nutrition during pregnancy, in the first years of life and during early childhood, a child’s growth can become stunted so they’re too short for their age and, therefore, unable to reach their full height potential as an adult. Research has also shown that high-quality protein early in life leads to better growth outcomes.
Calcium and vitamin D are extremely important as well, especially for girls and young women. Calcium is a major part of the bone structure itself, making bones strong — and vitamin D helps our bodies absorb calcium. Our bodies store about 99% of our calcium in bones, and these stores level off once we reach adulthood. So, by the time you’re 25, you’re not going to add any more to those stores and you need to maintain what you’ve got.
“As women enter menopause, lower levels of estrogen cause those stores to decline, which can lead to weak bones or osteoporosis. If you've ever heard of an elderly woman stepping off a curb and breaking a hip, this is how that can happen,” shares Dr. Brown. “The more calcium you get early on, the healthier those stores of calcium will be as we get older.”
As a rule of thumb, low-fat dairy products have the most calcium (the higher the fat, the lower the calcium), followed by green vegetables.
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“If all this is not enough to convince your child to drink their milk and eat their broccoli (and it probably won’t be), tell them that stronger bones really will help them be taller, and these foods will help them get there,” he suggests.
Research has shown that a variety of factors like atmospheric pollution, maternal health, economic inequality, inability to access clean water and sanitation, and other environmental factors may all impact someone’s ability to achieve their true height potential.
Other medical conditions that directly impact nutrient absorption and bone development can also impact someone’s height. For example, research shows that about 40% of kids who are diagnosed with chronic kidney disease before puberty continue to have a reduced height later in adult life.
Other medical conditions that can impact your height include:
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“Many of these conditions will affect our children for their whole lives, which makes it so important to get a handle on them early on. As an example, consider cystic fibrosis — before the 1950s, children rarely lived past the age of 5. Now, people can be expected to live well into their 60s and 70s,” notes Dr. Brown. “The sooner you diagnose and treat these conditions, the better chances your child has of meeting their milestones and just being a kid.”
Women have grown taller over the centuries — a trend we’ve seen for nearly all humans everywhere. In the U.S., for example, the average height of women in 1960-1962 was 63.1 inches or 5 feet 3 inches — a half-inch shorter than the women of today.
Researchers believe human height has continued to climb through the ages because of scientific improvements, increased medical care, better nutrition, and overall better quality of life and longevity.
But having access to these things doesn’t mean you’re guaranteed to achieve a taller stature. So much of an individual’s height is predetermined by genetics and the intersection of other factors.
In fact, research is ongoing to determine why growth has become stagnant or continues to decline in certain areas of the U.S. and other regions like Sub-Saharan Africa, despite improvements made in the areas of health and nutrition. And some researchers believe that eventually, we’ll reach the upper limit of our heights and stop growing taller.
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Your blood pressure, heart rate, weight and height — these are standard measurements healthcare providers take whenever you step into their office. Taken together, a provider can determine patterns in your growth and development and how other underlying medical conditions may be impacted or experienced based on these measurements.
Your height and weight together are often used to calculate your body mass index (BMI), an estimation of your amount of body fat. But BMI is just that — an estimation based on averages. Although your BMI can often be an inaccurate account of your health and well-being, your height and weight still have a direct impact on your overall health and wellness.
Research shows that shorter women are more likely to have shorter pregnancies, putting them at higher risk for preterm birth. If you have a shorter stature, knowing that nothing can be done to boost your height overnight or even influence your own genetics might make this fact feel alarming. But having this knowledge means you can instead focus on making sure other elements are in order like:
Cancer, by its very nature, is an over-production of mutated cells. Because of this, your height and weight have a direct impact on your ability to reduce or increase your risks for certain types of cancer. For example, a 2012 study of 100,000 women showed shorter women were less likely to get ovarian cancer and that ovarian cancer risk increased significantly with height and BMI.
Knowing this, it can be helpful to keep up with cancer screenings and focus on reducing your risk for cancer wherever possible.
Your heart is responsible for pumping continuous blood flow through your entire body. So, if you have a shorter stature, do you have fewer complications when it comes to heart health considering your blood has less surface area to travel? The answer: Not exactly.
Your heart health depends on a variety of factors, of which your height and weight play a big role. Research shows that shorter people have higher risks for coronary heart disease (CAD), with one study finding that adults shorter than 5 feet 3 inches were 50% more likely to develop CAD than those who were 5 feet 8 inches or taller.
In another study on a type of blood clot called venous thromboembolism, researchers found that the risk for blood clots was lowest among women 5 feet 1 inch or shorter.
For women, risk of heart disease increases with age. So, make sure you’re proactive about your heart health by following a heart-healthy diet and a consistent exercise routine. Quitting smoking can also be beneficial, not just for your heart and circulatory system, but your whole body, too.
“In the end, we all have a certain height we can potentially achieve, and once we are there, we want to keep our bodies as healthy as we can,” says Dr. Brown.
“We all have the ability to prevent or minimize conditions like heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes and COPD. The most important way we can do this is through good nutrition and regular exercise. Having a healthy lifestyle is completely within our control, and it’s never too late to start.”
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