NPR: America: Once We Were Giants, Now We're Just Short

America: Once We Were Giants, Now We're Just Short

You know, I thought we were all looking relatively shorter these days.

Research shows that, basically, the world is getting taller ... and we're not. The Associated Press reports Americans, formerly the tallest people, reached a height plateau just after World War II and started falling behind the rest of the world.

And don't dismiss that height advantage as a tall tale. Many economists say it indicates a country's well-being.

It's not that being tall actually makes you smarter, richer or healthier. It's that the same things that make you tall -- a nutritious diet, good prenatal care and a healthy childhood -- also benefit you in those other ways. ... New research suggests that America's diet and its expensive, inequitable healthcare system may be the problem.

Some conservatives aren't impressed with that argument. Perry Eidelbus of the Eidelblog called the AP story "propaganda" promoting socialized healthcare.

Regardless of the political argument, researchers have put together some interesting statistics. For instance, people from rural areas like the Midwest are, on average, 1.75 inches taller than people who live in big cities like New York. (This could be why the great basketball movie Hoosiers is about players from Indiana, not Brooklyn.)

6:24 PM ET | 07-16-2007 | permalink

Comments (Send a comment)

"Big cities" and urban areas have a greater ethnic mix which leads to a greater proportion of couples of mixed ethnicity producing offspring of mixed ethnicity which may account for the height differential.

Sent by juliet douglas | 9:57 AM ET | 07-17-2007

The statement that people from the midwest are taller than people who live in big cities like New York makes one wonder if the researchers allowed for the average height of immigrants in the past fifty years. Surely it will take a number of generations for all the Asian and Hispanic immigrants to catch up to the rest of us, and meanwhile their numbers pull the average height down.

Sent by CAS | 10:32 AM ET | 07-17-2007

So we long ago reached our genetic potential for height; now we're going for girth, and, by god, we're winning!

BTW, you may have noticed that the racial mix in NYC is not the same as in Midwestern farm country. No reason to think average height would be the same.

And this is not propaganda for socialized health care. It's nutrition and genes. But, we do need socialized health care. We pay 2x anybody else in the world and are 30-something in life expectancy. Our health care system is as dysfunctional as the Catholic Church!

Sent by Jim Crissman | 10:39 AM ET | 07-17-2007

For the record, I'm not a conservative. Perhaps you could have bothered to do some fact-checking, or at least ASK me?

Par for the course for your "news" quality, I suppose.

Sent by Perry Eidelbus | 2:25 PM ET | 07-26-2007

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