Are You One of the Shrinking Americans?

By Joshua Holland, AlterNet. Posted July 9, 2007.

According to a new study, white and black Americans have been shrinking dramatically relative to their European counterparts since the end of World War II.

Researchers say a population's average height is a "mirror" reflecting the socioeconomic health of a society and speculate that Americans' worship of "market-based" social policies may explain why we're now looking up to the Germans and Swedes.

It's a dramatic reversal. We had always been giants, with the tallest men in the world, going back as far as the data exists (at least to the mid-19th century). During the First World War, American GIs still towered over the Europeans they liberated. But for three decades beginning at the end of World War II, Americans' average height stagnated while Europeans continued the growth-spurt that one would expect to see during a period of relative peace and rising incomes.

Now, with an average height of 5'10", American men are now significantly shorter than men from countries like Denmark (6-footers) or the Netherlands (6' 1"). In fact, Americans -- men and women -- are now shorter, on average, than the citizens of every single country in Western and Northern Europe.

And our vertical challenge is continuing to grow; American whites born between 1975-1983 started growing again, but still not as quickly as Western Europeans born in the same period. Meanwhile, the average height of American blacks in that age group remained unchanged.

The study avoided capturing the effect that immigrants coming from less developed (and presumably shorter) countries might have by looking only at non-Hispanic whites and blacks in the United States. The researchers also compared people born in the same period in order to avoid the effect aging has on height. The data were actual measurements rather than the heights people reported to researchers, as some earlier studies had used.

How can one explain that reversal -- a turnaround the study's authors, Benjamin Lauderdale at Princeton University and John Komlos at the University of Munich, call "remarkable"? They believe it's a result of "differences in the socioeconomic institutions of Europe and the United States":

We conjecture that the U.S. healthcare system, as well as the relatively weak welfare safety net, might be why human growth in the United States has not performed as well in relative terms ...

What determines the height of a population?

Scientists have a good understanding of the factors that determine height. Genetic variations are key to individuals' heights but aren't a significant factor in the average height of a population. That has to do with health and nutrition, especially during childhood, from prenatal health through adolescence. The authors of the study note that, in the scientific community, "there is widespread agreement that nutritional intake, the incidence of diseases and the availability of medical services have a major impact on human size."

More research is needed to fully understand why Americans are shrinking relative to the Europeans, but some differences between the two cultures -- and their political economies -- stand out.

Healthcare is one. It's not just that Europeans are universally covered while one out of seven Americans is uninsured; it's also the difference in approach. Specifically, public-sector healthcare puts a greater emphasis on prevention, while our for-profit insurance-based system creates incentives to treat illness rather than prevent it. This leads not only to much greater costs -- the United States spends about twice as much per person on healthcare as the rest of the advanced economies do -- but also plays a likely role in our declining stature.

The United States also has far more concentrated wealth than any of its European allies. That means that while we are, on average, one of the wealthiest countries in the world, we also lead all the advanced economies in poverty. Poverty limits access to both healthcare and good nutrition.

A more important factor, in terms of average height, is childhood poverty. Here, the United States stands alone among the advanced economies with a stunning figure: 18 percent of American children -- almost one in five -- live in poverty. No other industrialized country comes close -- it's about five times the child poverty rate in Northern Europe. Again, nutrition and access to healthcare both vary with family income for children just as they do in adults.

See more stories tagged with: industrialized nations, diet, health care, height

Joshua Holland is an AlterNet staff writer.

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