Which Countries Have The Tallest Men And Women In The World?

Who are the tallest people of them all?

According to the largest every study of height around the world, it’s Dutch men and Latvian women.

Researchers from Imperial College tracked height among young adults across a span of 100 years to come to the conclusion.

They studied height charts from most of the world’s countries dating from 1914 to 2014.

The results were published in the journal eLife and confirm anecdotal evidence that men from the Netherlands are the tallest.

The research revealed that Iranian men have increased in height by an average of 16.5cm in the past 100 years, and South Korean women by 20.2cm.

In the UK, the average person’s height has increased by 11cm in the past century.

The list of the top ten tallest countries is dominated by European nations.

British men are only the 31st tallest in the world, while British women are 38th.

More than 800 scientists worldwide were involved in the research, which said Dutch men had an average height of 182.5cm.

Latvian women, the tallest on the planet, have an average height of 170cm.

At the other end of the scale, men from East Timor are the smallest in the world, with an average height of 160cm, and Guatemalan women are the smallest in their category, with an average height of 149cm.

TALL MEN:

1. Netherlands

2. Belgium

3. Estonia

4. Latvia

5. Denmark

6. Bosnia and Herzegovina

7. Croatia

8. Serbia

9. Iceland

10. Czech Republic

TALL WOMEN:

1. Latvia

2. Netherlands

3. Estonia

4. Czech Republic

5. Serbia

6. Slovakia

7. Denmark

8. Lithuania

9. Belarus

10. Ukraine

Professor Majid Ezzati from the School of Public Health at Imperial College said: “This study gives us a picture of the health of nations over the past century, and reveals the average height of some nations may even be shrinking while others continue to grow taller.

“This confirms we urgently need to address children and adolescents’ environment and nutrition on a global scale, and ensure we’re giving the world’s children the best possible start in life.”

Mary De Silva, head of Population, Environment and Health at the Wellcome Trust, which co-funded the study, said: “This is a unique analysis that shows the real power of combining a hundred years of population data sources that span the globe.

“The most striking finding is that despite the huge increases in height seen in some countries, there is still a considerable gap between the shortest and tallest countries.”

(Pictures: Rex/NCD-RisC)