Confused by the dashed lines at first. It's not an estimation of future heights, it just points to the country names...
this post was submitted on 24 Mar 2026
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The final year or two is anecdotal. "I don't have data for this period, but I did recently meet a really short American dude, so they're probably trending shorter."
So this is the rise of China I'm always hearing about
Unironically yes. The height is a consequence of better living standard.
The Dutch are making sure as sea levels rise they can still breath. Crafty...
What is happening in China?
Not starving anymore
The famines were well over by the 90's and 80's but there's also a difference in growth rate between "sufficient" and "abundant" diets.
Next comes an obesity crisis.
They managed to pull 1 billion people out of poverty and starvation, within 30 years.
Now they have a standard of living that's almost exactly at the global average.
China is more impressive than America in so many ways now.
For having copied our homework for 80 years?
They flipped the script on our exploitation, you mean
Many reasons. America seems to be declining and China seems to be rising. Its actually scary for me since I live in Europe and i prefer America to China, but the future is uncertain.
China is intelligent and America is not, currently.
copy theres so when they copy yours next time they will be "well this is familiar"
If they'd get off their asses and invent anything, we might. They plagiarized themselves into modernity. If it weren't for the US they'd be spending the 21st century dying of smallpox by candlelight. Without them we'd recall fewer products for heavy metal contamination.
Who is to blame then - US companies who put production there to maximize profits, or the Chinese for taking that opportunity to get their country into the high tech era?
The US has exploited China for cheap labor for decades now. And they expected that to continue forever. Its old ways of thinking from the guys who were in the cold war, and the Chinese realized this is a giant opportunity to build up their entire country to be an economic power that will dominate the world. They have more than one billion people.
Like I said, one country is intelligent, the other one not.
Improved health conditions. The start of the curve is around '91, and given this graph is for 19yos it's probably some change around '72. I don't know which change.
Mao died in '76. This wasn't some great achievement, but the end of one of the most catastrophic policies any country has submitted its own population to.
Mao died in '76. This wasn’t some great achievement, but the end of one of the most catastrophic policies any country has submitted its own population to.
Nah. Even if we eyeball the start of the curve, like I did, it clearly starts way before 1976+19 = 1995:
And upon further inspection even my eyeballed 1991 is a bit too late; 1969+19 = 1988 would make a better fit. It's something that happened before the 70s.
Life expectamcy in China doubled under Mao.
Life expectancy is declining under both Biden and Trump in the USA.
Better diet, mostly.
Possible, but "better diet" on its own should apply to all five.
Another interesting bit in that pic is India. It was in a rather steep curve up from before '85 to ~'92[?]. Then it dropped, stagnated, started climbing back.
In 300 years they'll all be at 3m
Unironically how some people do statistics
One of the most insanely quick rises of any country from poverty to modernity.
Same thing as Japan a generation prior. Kids who get to eat their fill are taller than ones who grow up with food insecurity. It's why my short grandpa who grew up poor during the depression and war demanded all the grandkids eat an extra helping as children and especially as teenagers.
Massive shoe lift plant in Shanghai.
I mean percentage wise, they gained a lot.
Got pork?
Chinese people doing Chinese things
Every night they eat Chinese food
Every night's a Friday night in China
I'm not surprised, I've long suspected the stereotype of east Asians being short is more related to food insecurity and lack of caloric abundance in childhood than genetics. Some Japanese people are short, but I'm tall in America and didn't feel meaningfully taller in Japan. If anything I actually saw more women taller than me in Tokyo than New York. Also stereotyping as coming from an area with a lot of Desi Americans I never would have thought Indians are significantly shorter than Chinese people on average.
Also weird to think there are countries where most men are my height or taller
I think Korea is similar to China too. When I went to Japan in 2013 I felt like a giant with my 187cm, but here in Korea I'm just tall like many other guys.
I bloody knew kids were getting taller.
Are those height filters a class filter then?
In order to know that we would have to break down something like the India section into different castes, and see if there's a height difference within the group overall group that correlates with the subgroups.
But I get where you're coming from. When I saw this was in data is beautiful my instinct was a little bit of a shiver because it felt like this data is informative but data might be a little bit racist.
And I say that as a 188.8 cm tall person born way outside the selection period. This needs some Southern African indigenous people representation.
Data can never be racist.
The decisions which data to collect, how to interpret it and how to act on it can all be racist.
But data is just numbers.
Selection bias plays a strong role in deciding what is racist and what isn't when it comes to data. P hacking and all that fun stuff too
Entirely anecdotal, but I live in a university town in the UK, and to me everyone seems to be short as fuck. Without knowing that the average height has been increasing for decades, based on local observation I would have guessed the opposite.