A recent study by scientists at the Imperial College of London shows Dutch men and Latvian women are now the world’s tallest people (1.8 cm and 1.73 cm respectively), while Iranian men and South Korean women experienced the largest height gains in the last century.
The study, published on Tuesday, assessed the measured heights of 18.6 million people born between 1896 and 1996, BBC reported.
In 1914, American men ranked third tallest in the world, and women ranked fourth tallest. Today, American men and women have fallen to 37th and 42nd tallest people in the world.
“The decline could be attributed to worsening nutrition standards for poor Americans,” said James Bentham and Majid Ezzati, both authors of the study.
But they said immigration from countries with shorter citizens could also have played a role.
