The average height in the United States is 5 feet 8.9 inches (about 5’9″) for adult men and 5 feet 3.5 inches for adult women. These figures come from the CDC’s most recent physical measurements of Americans aged 20 and older, collected between August 2021 and August 2023.
Average Height for Men and Women
Adult men in the U.S. measure 68.9 inches tall on average, which works out to roughly 175 centimeters. Adult women average 63.5 inches, or about 161 centimeters. That’s a difference of just under 5.5 inches between the sexes.
These numbers reflect actual physical measurements taken during clinical exams as part of the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), not self-reported data. People tend to overestimate their own height by about half an inch to a full inch, so measured averages run slightly shorter than what you’d get from surveys.
How Height Varies by State
Where you live in the U.S. correlates with small but real differences in average height. Montana has the tallest average for men at about 70.7 inches (just under 5’11”), while Hawaii has the shortest at roughly 69 inches (5’9″). That gap of about 1.7 inches reflects differences in ethnic composition, immigration patterns, and possibly nutrition across regions. Hawaii has the shortest average height for both men and women.
States in the upper Midwest and Mountain West, where populations are heavily descended from Northern European immigrants, tend to cluster near the top. States with large Asian American or Hispanic populations, groups that tend to be shorter on average due to genetics, often rank lower. None of this says anything about the health of any individual person.
How American Height Has Changed Over Time
Americans were among the tallest people in the world at the start of the 20th century. Men born in the late 1800s already averaged around 171 centimeters (5’7″), which put the U.S. near the top globally alongside Scandinavian countries. Over the following century, heights rose across nearly all nations as nutrition, sanitation, and healthcare improved.
But the U.S. gained less height than most other wealthy countries. A major analysis published in eLife, covering height trends across hundreds of nations over a full century, found that American height gains plateaued earlier and ended up smaller than those in Northern Europe. Countries like the Netherlands, Denmark, and Norway kept growing taller through the mid-20th century and beyond, while American averages leveled off sooner. The result: the U.S. was once one of the tallest nations and has now fallen behind many of its European peers.
Researchers point to several possible explanations. The U.S. has more economic inequality than most of Western Europe, and childhood poverty is strongly linked to shorter adult height. Access to healthcare during critical growth years is less universal in the U.S. than in countries with single-payer systems. Immigration from regions with shorter average heights has also shifted the population mix over time, though this accounts for only part of the difference.
What Determines Your Height
Genetics is the dominant factor, responsible for roughly 60 to 80 percent of your final adult height. If both your parents are tall, you’re very likely to be tall. But genes set a range, not a fixed point, and environmental factors determine where within that range you end up.
Nutrition during childhood and adolescence matters enormously. Protein intake, vitamin D, calcium, and overall calorie sufficiency during growth years all influence how close you get to your genetic potential. Chronic illness in childhood, hormonal conditions, and severe stress can also stunt growth. Most height gain happens before age 18 in girls and before age 20 in boys, with the fastest growth occurring during puberty.
Where Americans Stand Globally
The average American man at 5’9″ is taller than the global male average of roughly 5’7″, but shorter than men in the Netherlands (about 6’0″), Montenegro, Denmark, and several other European nations. American women at 5’3.5″ similarly exceed the global female average but fall short of their counterparts in Latvia, the Netherlands, and much of Scandinavia.
Globally, the shortest average heights are found in parts of Southeast Asia and Central America, where men average around 5’3″ to 5’4″. The tallest populations are concentrated in Northwestern Europe. The full range from the shortest to tallest countries spans about 8 inches for men, a gap that reflects vast differences in nutrition, healthcare access, and genetic background across populations.