A research published in the journal eLife lists the tallest people by country. The research revealed that over the past 100 years humans have become taller to their ancestors thanks to better nutrition and health, but the amount of height gain varies from country to country. Authors found that people from central and southern Europe, as well as East Asia, grew taller in the last 100 years. Meanwhile there was little gain in height for people from sub-Saharan African and South Asian nations. A few countries experienced decreases in their average adult height after years of gain.
Researchers found that Dutch men, at 182.5 centimeters (about 6 feet), and Latvian women, at 170 centimeters (5 feet 7 inches), are the tallest in the world. Men from Timor-Leste, at 160 centimeters (5 feet 3 inches), and Guatemalan women, at 149 centimeters (4 feet 11 inches), are considered the shortest. Researchers used nearly 1,500 worldwide population-based data, such as publicly available measurement surveys, to estimate height for people from all over the world born between 1896 to 1996. There were also large gains in height in Japan, Greenland, some countries in Southern Europe (e.g., Greece) and Central Europe (e.g., Serbia and Poland, and for women Czech Republic)
The nations with the tallest men in 2014 (1914 ranking in brackets):
1. Netherlands (12)
2. Belgium (33)
3. Estonia (4)
4. Latvia (13)
5. Denmark (9)
6. Bosnia and Herzegovina (19)
7. Croatia (22)
8. Serbia (30)
9. Iceland (6)
10. Czech Republic (24)
The nations with the tallest women in 2014 (1914 ranking in brackets):
1. Latvia (28)
2. Netherlands (38)
3. Estonia (16)
4. Czech Republic (69)
5. Serbia (93)
6. Slovakia (26)
7. Denmark (11)
8. Lithuania (41)
9. Belarus (42)
10. Ukraine (43)
