Are Europeans growing taller?

That is the interesting question posed recently by columnist Paul Krugman, who investigated the evidence that Europeans have been growing taller whereas Americans (who used to be the tallest people in the world) are not.

Traveling through Europe recently, I’ve been able to confirm through personal experience what statistical surveys tell us: the perceived stature of Americans is not what it was. Europeans used to look up to us; now, many of them look down on us instead. No, I’m not talking metaphorically about our loss of moral authority in the wake of Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib. I’m literally talking about feet and inches…

The data show that Americans, who in the words of a recent paper by the economic historian John Komlos and Benjamin Lauderdale in Social Science Quarterly, were “tallest in the world between colonial times and the middle of the 20th century,” have now “become shorter (and fatter) than Western and Northern Europeans. In fact, the U.S. population is currently at the bottom end of the height distribution in advanced industrial countries.”

This is not a trivial matter. As the paper says, “height is indicative of how well the human organism thrives in its socioeconomic environment.”

Krugman notes that this is a bit of a puzzle because, although there is “normally a strong association between per capita income and a country’s average height,” that is evidently not the determining cause of this height shift since the U.S. still has a higher per capita GDP than other nations. So what is the cause? Well, that’s where it gets a bit depressing.

We seem to be left with two main possible explanations of the height gap.

One is that America really has turned into “Fast Food Nation.”

“U.S. children,” write Mr. Komlos and Mr. Lauderdale, “consume more meals prepared outside the home, more fast food rich in fat, high in energy density and low in essential micronutrients, than do European children.” Our reliance on fast food, in turn, may reflect lack of family time because we work too much: U.S. G.D.P. per capita is high partly because employed Americans work many more hours than their European counterparts.

A broader explanation would be that contemporary America is a society that, in a variety of ways, doesn’t take very good care of its children. Recently, Unicef issued a report comparing a number of measures of child well-being in 21 rich countries, including health and safety, family and peer relationships and such things as whether children eat fruit and are physically active. The report put the Netherlands at the top; sure enough, the Dutch are now the world’s tallest people, almost 3 inches taller, on average, than non-Hispanic American whites. The U.S. ended up in 20th place, below Poland, Portugal and Hungary, but ahead of Britain.

In short, Americans spend so many hours at work that they don’t devote enough time to family, physical activity and a good diet. If this is all true, then you might say that the work and task-oriented culture of the U.S. is now even affecting our height.

Related posts:

1. The evolution of the European family ...
2. Mediterranean diet vs. fast food ...