Just out:
America's Declining Stature: How Did We Become Shorter Than Europe? By Joshua Holland, AlterNet Posted on July 9, 2007, Printed on July 9, 2007 <http://www.alternet.org/story/56303/>
According to a new study, white and black Americans have been shrinking dramatically relative to their European counterparts since the end of World War Two.
Researchers say a population's average height is a "mirror" reflecting the socioeconomic health of a society, and speculate that Americans' worship of "market-based" social policies may explain why we're now looking up to the Germans and Swedes.
It's a dramatic reversal. We had always been giants, with the tallest men in the world going back as far as the data exists (at least to the mid-19th century). During the First World War, American GIs still towered over the Europeans they liberated. But for three decades beginning at the end of World War Two, Americans' average height stagnated while Europeans continued the growth-spurt that one would expect to see during a period of relative peace and rising incomes.
Now, with an average height of 5'10", American men are now significantly shorter than men from countries like Denmark (6 footers) or the Netherlands (6' 1"). In fact, Americans -- men and women -- are now shorter, on average, than the citizens of every single country in Western and Northern Europe.
And our vertical challenge is continuing to grow; American whites born between 1975-1983 started growing again, but still not as quickly as Western Europeans born in the same period. Meanwhile, the average height of American blacks in that age group remained unchanged.
The study avoided capturing the effect that immigrants coming from less developed (and presumably shorter) countries might have by looking only at non-Hispanic whites and blacks in the U.S. The researchers also compared people born in the same period in order to avoid the effect aging has on height. The data were actual measurements rather than the heights people reported to researchers, as some earlier studies had used.
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-- Andy