Data

Average height of men by decade of birth

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About this data

Average height of men by decade of birth
Reconstruction of human heights by birth decade using a variety of different sources.
Source
Baten and Blum (2014)with minor processing by Our World in Data
Last updated
December 31, 2024
Next expected update
April 2026
Date range
1550–2000
Unit
cm

Sources and processing

Baten and Blum – Height

This variable contains anthropometric information which can be used as an indicator for human health and welfare in 165 countries spanning the period 1810-1989, and a smaller number of countries 1500-1800.

Retrieved on
December 31, 2024
Citation
This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data. To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below.
“Why are you tall while others are short? Agricultural production and other proximate determinants of global heights”, Joerg Baten and Matthias Blum, European Review of Economic History, Volume 18, Issue 2, May 2014, Pages 144–165, https://doi.org/10.1093/ereh/heu003
More details: https://clio-infra.eu/Indicators/Height.html

This variable contains anthropometric information which can be used as an indicator for human health and welfare in 165 countries spanning the period 1810-1989, and a smaller number of countries 1500-1800.

Retrieved on
December 31, 2024
Citation
This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data. To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below.
“Why are you tall while others are short? Agricultural production and other proximate determinants of global heights”, Joerg Baten and Matthias Blum, European Review of Economic History, Volume 18, Issue 2, May 2014, Pages 144–165, https://doi.org/10.1093/ereh/heu003
More details: https://clio-infra.eu/Indicators/Height.html

All data and visualizations on Our World in Data rely on data sourced from one or several original data providers. Preparing this original data involves several processing steps. Depending on the data, this can include standardizing country names and world region definitions, converting units, calculating derived indicators such as per capita measures, as well as adding or adapting metadata such as the name or the description given to an indicator.

At the link below you can find a detailed description of the structure of our data pipeline, including links to all the code used to prepare data across Our World in Data.

Read about our data pipeline

How to cite this page

To cite this page overall, including any descriptions, FAQs or explanations of the data authored by Our World in Data, please use the following citation:

“Data Page: Average height of men by decade of birth”, part of the following publication: Max Roser, Cameron Appel, and Hannah Ritchie (2021) - “Human Height”. Data adapted from Baten and Blum. Retrieved from https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20260304-094028/grapher/average-height-of-men-for-selected-countries.html [online resource] (archived on March 4, 2026).

How to cite this data

In-line citationIf you have limited space (e.g. in data visualizations), you can use this abbreviated in-line citation:

Baten and Blum (2014) – with minor processing by Our World in Data

Full citation

Baten and Blum (2014) – with minor processing by Our World in Data. “Average height of men by decade of birth” [dataset]. Baten and Blum, “Height” [original data]. Retrieved March 31, 2026 from https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20260304-094028/grapher/average-height-of-men-for-selected-countries.html (archived on March 4, 2026).

Quick download

Download the data shown in this chart as a ZIP file containing a CSV file, metadata in JSON format, and a README. The CSV file can be opened in Excel, Google Sheets, and other data analysis tools.

Data API

Use these URLs to programmatically access this chart's data and configure your requests with the options below. Our documentation provides more information on how to use the API, and you can find a few code examples below.

Data URL (CSV format)
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/average-height-of-men-for-selected-countries.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false
Metadata URL (JSON format)
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/average-height-of-men-for-selected-countries.metadata.json?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false

Code examples

Examples of how to load this data into different data analysis tools.

Excel / Google Sheets
=IMPORTDATA("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/average-height-of-men-for-selected-countries.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false")
Python with Pandas
import pandas as pd
import requests

# Fetch the data.
df = pd.read_csv("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/average-height-of-men-for-selected-countries.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false", storage_options = {'User-Agent': 'Our World In Data data fetch/1.0'})

# Fetch the metadata
metadata = requests.get("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/average-height-of-men-for-selected-countries.metadata.json?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false").json()
R
library(jsonlite)

# Fetch the data
df <- read.csv("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/average-height-of-men-for-selected-countries.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false")

# Fetch the metadata
metadata <- fromJSON("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/average-height-of-men-for-selected-countries.metadata.json?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false")
Stata
import delimited "https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/average-height-of-men-for-selected-countries.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false", encoding("utf-8") clear