THE’average height of Italians And increased significantly during the twentieth century, to stabilize in recent years. According to Istat data, at the beginning of the twentieth century, boys 1.80 meters tall were a very rare exception, just 1.3%, and their average height was only 165 cm. Today, however, theaverage height is of 177.8cm for men and of 164.5cm for women.
Let’s see through Istat data how the height of Italians has changed over the years and what these changes depend on.
How tall Italians have become over the years
The historical series ofIstat they allow us to reconstruct the changes in the height of Italians for more than a century and a half thanks to the registers of conscripts. There average male height of those born In the 1854 was of 162cm and what is most striking is the percentage, among these, of boys at least 180 centimeters tall: only 0.6%. More than a third (33.5%) he was in fact tall a maximum of 1.60 metreswhile the majority (52%) had a height included between 160 and 170 cmand only the 14% exceeded 170 cm.
Fifty years later, in 1904, the average rises to 165 cmand children over 1.80 meters double (1.3%), while the share of those taller than 1.70 meters reaches 16%. We are still at low numbers, but they are advancing year after year.
The born in 1951 they were the first for which both the average and median height has exceeded the threshold of 170 centimetres. In 1960 the average reached 172.7 centimeters while in 1980 it was 174.6 cm and very tall boys (over 1.80cm) exceeded 20%. Since then, growth slowed until it stabilized.
But How tall are Italians on average today? According to the statistics of Ncd Risk Factor Collaboration (an international network of 800 researchers collaborating with the World Health Organization) the average Italian height of a man in 2016 was of 177.8 centimetreswhile that of women of 164.6 cm.
However, not everyone grows in the same way. The tallest in Italy live in Friuli-Venezia Giulia: average male over 178 cmand more than a third of young people are over six feet tall. There Sardinia, instead, it is at the bottom of the ranking: only 8.4% over 180 cm. Calabria and Sicily precede it, where around 12% are over six feet tall. Curiously, Lazio is the only region where the height of the latest generations, instead of increasing, has actually decreased slightly.
Globally, the data places theItaly in twenty-ninth place (out of 179 countries) for human height et al thirty-second place for that of women. We are therefore in the top 30, but far from the very first places. On the podium of the tallest in the world we find the Dutch with their average 182.5 cm, followed by Belgium (181.7 cm) and Estonia (181.6 cm). Among women, the Latvians (169.7 cm) came first, followed by the Dutch (168.7 cm) and the Estonians (168.6 cm).
The shortest men in the world they are instead those of East Timorwhich do not reach an average height of 160 cm (159.8 cm), followed by Yemen and Laos. The shortest women, however, come from Guatemala (here the average is 149.4 cm), the Philippines and Bangladesh.
What does height depend on?
When we are born we are about long on average 50 centimetresbut this measure is intended for more than that triple over the course of two decades. In fact, height is not definitive until after development, when the growth cartilages have healed (on average between 16 and 20 years).
But why is the average height growing? According to the researchers it depends on one combination of genetics and environment. For example, in Friuli-Venezia Giulia, it was probably the combination of genes of Slavic and Germanic origin plus favorable conditions that created the highest population in Italy.
While the halt in average growth in recent years is probably due both to the reaching of a genetic limit and to geographical and cultural aspects: the average height in fact also depends on the population, and compared to the past in Italy we now have agreater influence than many other ethnic groups. Furthermore, if genes give us potential, but the context in the first years of life is unfavorable (poverty, malnutrition, stress, health problems) that potential will never be realized.
And if living in the city in the past represented an advantage due to the presence of more services, more food and more health, in recent years this gap has disappeared to the point of becoming a disadvantage. In fact, recent research published in Nature tells us that living in the city more slightly reduce growth: stress, noise, pollution and junk food can in fact accelerate puberty and close the growth plates earlier.
