Study finds world’s tallest are Dutch and Latvians

South Korean women and Iranian men are significantly taller than they were 100 years ago but US people have barely grown, according to a new study on Tuesday that reflects nutritional and environmental factors.

Researchers at Imperial College London used data from around the world to track the height of young adults between 1914 and 2014 in more than 200 countries and territories.

Where once Scandinavia and the United States produced the tallest men, the Netherlands, Belgium, Estonia and Latvia now top the rankings, with Dutch men measuring an average height of 182.5 cm.

Latvia has the tallest women, averaging 170 cm, followed by women from the Netherlands and Estonia.

The shortest men in the world are from East Timor, with an average height of 160 cm, and the shortest women are from Guatemala, averaging a height of 149 cm.

While the global trend has been an increase in height, some countries in sub-Saharan Africa, North Africa and the Middle East have seen a decline in the past 30 or 40 years.

This is often in some of the poorest parts of the world — the average height in Sierra Leone, Uganda and Rwanda has declined by 5cm in recent decades.

The top 10 tallest countries are all on the European continent.

The US once had the third tallest men and fourth tallest women, but has fallen to 37 th and 42nd place.

US men and women have grown by just 6cm and 5cm since 1914.

After a rapid acceleration in height until the 1960s, growth in Japan has also flattened out, and the Japanese are now shorter than people from South Korea and China.

By contrast, the height of Iranian men has increased by an average of 16.5 cm — the largest recorded — while South Korean women are on average 20.2 cm taller.