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How South Koreans got so much taller
Humans have gotten a lot taller in the past 100 years — and South Korea shows us why
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A century ago, humans were quite short. For example, the average South Korean woman was about 4-foot-7, or 142 centimeters, while the average American woman was about 5-foot-2, or 159 centimeters. Humans were fairly short by today’s standards, and that was true throughout nearly all of human history.
But in the past century, human heights have skyrocketed. Globally, humans grew about 3 inches on average, but in South Korea, women grew an astounding 8 inches and men grew 6 inches.
South Korea is a unique example. In the early part of the 20th century, South Korea was a poor and hungry country. But drastic economic growth fueled improved living conditions.
For example, in 1961 the country’s food supply was about 2,100 calories per person; by 2013, each person had about 1,200 additional calories available, according to data from the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization. UN data also shows that in 1950, about 20 percent of South Korean infants died before age 1, but now it’s about 0.2 percent.
However, South Korea’s improved living conditions are a harsh contrast to North Korea. For half of the 20th century, the south and north were one country. Heights in those two regions were nearly identical. So what happened to human height in North Korea after an authoritarian regime took over and closed off its borders?
More reading:
A Farewell to Alms: A Brief Economic History of the World, by economist Gregory Clark, beautifully connects economic conditions to human living conditions: https://www.amazon.com/Farewell-Alms-Economic-History-Princeton/dp/0691141282
This Scientific American article by molecular biologist Chao-Qiang Lai breaks down the research on how much of human height can be attributed to genetics and how much is environmental: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-much-of-human-height/
The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization has some of my favorite data sets. Understanding what humans eat — and how that’s changed over time — gives us insights into everything from economics to biodiversity: https://www.fao.org/faostat/en/#data/FBSH
There are many data sets on human heights over time, but the one I used in this video is from the NCD Risk Factor Collaboration: https://ncdrisc.org/
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