Ohio senator and Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance is 6 foot, 2 inches, it was revealed last week, putting to bed speculation about his height after a Google error suggested he was much shorter.
But epidemiologists have told Newsweek that Vance bucks a wider national trend, as average heights in America are falling in comparison with the rest of the world.
Experts have suggested that poor nutrition and unequal access to healthcare could be holding Americans back from reaching their vertical potential.
Professor Melinda C. Mills told Newsweek: "Height is determined both by genetics and the environment. It has been found to be around 60 to 80 percent environmental and 20 to 40 percent genetics." Mills is the director of the Leverhulme Centre for Demographic Science at the University of Oxford in the UK.
She added: "There is evidence that the average height of Americans has decreased since around 1980."
Vance has only recently been revealed to be bucking the trend of Americans' decreasing stature. Previously, an error on Google led to him being incorrectly put at a modest 5 foot, 7 inches, thanks to inaccurate data that was pulled from his old IMDb profile.
This fueled theories that his running mate, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, was fibbing about his height—6 foot, 3inches—as the two appeared of similar stature when they were pictured standing side by side.
But last week, Intelligencer reporter Matt Stieb reported that Vance was 6 foot, 2 inches, which was confirmed by Will Martin, communications director of the Trump-Vance campaign.
Mills told Newsweek that a person's height could be professionally advantageous, with some evidence suggesting that every extra 4 inches of height may be associated with increased earnings of 5 percent for men and 12 percent for women.
"There is a myriad of studies that show height increases authority," she said. She said, for example, that a study using data from FIFA (soccer) referees found that taller referees were able to maintain more control of the game.
But she added: "It is hard to establish whether this is a real causal relationship or if those who are taller also had more resources during their childhood, which boosted their overall health and performance."
Mills suggested that Americans' decreasing height could be an indicator of poor nutrition and health.
Data on 18.6 million people, analyzed in a study by the international health network NCD Risk Factor Collaboration in 2016, found that North Americans used to be among the tallest people in the world—back in 1896.
This advantage seemed to peter out over the course of the 20th century, and then stagnate, with the U.S. falling behind other nations from 1980 onwards.
Now, the average height of young adult men born in the U.S. is just over 5 foot, 9 inches—2 inches behind the Netherlands and shorter than many other countries in Europe, including the U.K.
"Height decline is important in the sense that it is a reflection of the general health of a population and often a mirror of food supply, school meals, childhood stress and access to healthcare," said Mills.
"We conducted a study of the Dutch, who are the tallest people on Earth, and in fact over the last 200 years grew by an astounding 7.9 inches in height.
"A clear reason for the growth in height, particularly in the Netherlands, is good environmental conditions and high dairy consumption."
Average height in the U.S. increased rapidly after the industrial revolution, but fell behind other nations, which research suggests may be due to economic and health policies.
A study by the Leverhulme Centre, published last Thursday, found that middle-aged American adults are significantly less healthy than their counterparts in the U.K.
Scientists studied health data from 15,000 women in the U.S. and U.K. who were born between 1970 and 1983. They found that American women had worse heart health and higher levels of obesity than British women.
Even the most privileged American women had similar or worse health when compared with women from the most disadvantaged groups in Britain—although British women were more likely to smoke.
Study author Andrea Tilstra told Newsweek: "While the study does not directly test the causes of these trends, we speculate that the social environment is less conducive to healthy living in the United States, compared to Britain."
"For example, the U.S. has worse access to free or subsidized healthcare and higher economic inequality, which can impact stress and health behaviors such as diet and exercise."
Tilstra said that the study showed wider socioeconomic equalities in the U.S. compared with the U.K., with the poorest American adults nearly eight times more likely to have diabetes that the wealthiest American adults.
"Sadly, we were not surprised by these results," she said. "They are consistent with the troubling mortality trends among middle-aged Americans and lagging U.S. life expectancy compared to other rich countries."
Mills told Newsweek that this research was evidence of the health of Americans lagging behind that of their European counterparts.
"The U.S. is falling behind in health and life expectancy compared to similar high-income countries, so focusing on children thriving, access to good nutrition and healthcare would be an admirable goal," she said.
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References
NCD Risk Factor Collaboration (NCD-RisC) (2016). eLife 5, e13410. https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.13410
Bridger Staatz, C., Gutin, I., Tilstra, A., Gimeno, L., Moltrecht, B., Moreno-Agostino, D., Moulton, V., Narayanan, M. K., Dowd, J. B., Gaydosh, L., & Ploubidis, G. B. (2024). Midlife health in Britain and the United States: A comparison of two nationally representative cohorts. International Journal of Epidemiology, 53(5). https://doi.org/10.1093/ije/dyae127
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