Average Height by Country

The figures come from the NCD Risk Factor Collaboration's 2020 study in The Lancet, "Height and body-mass index trajectories of school-aged children and adolescents from 1985 to 2019 in 200 countries and territories". The study pooled 2,181 population-based measurement surveys covering 65 million people and modelled the mean height of each country's boys and girls at every age from 5 to 19, for every year from 1985 to 2019.

HeightViz keeps two points from each series: the 2019 estimate at age 19, which is the most recent and the closest to adult height the study offers, and the 1985 estimate at the same age, so each country page can show the change over 34 years. Every 2019 figure carries its 95% uncertainty interval as published. The data are released under CC BY 4.0; nothing here is estimated by HeightViz, and countries not in the study are not listed.

Each row shows the men's and women's means in centimetres and in feet and inches, and the country's rank for each sex among the 200 countries and territories, tallest first. Sort by any column or search for a country, then open its page for the change since 1985, the uncertainty intervals and a board that draws both averages beside your own height.

A mean describes a population, not a person: half of the people in any country are shorter than its mean and half taller. To see how a specific height compares, use the height difference calculator or the height comparison board.