iStockphoto / cherezoff
You are not imagining things, Americans are, in fact, getting shorter and shorter.
These days, the good ol’ US of A is #1 at being #1 but back in the 1800s we were actually #1 when it came to height. Americans were the tallest country in the world according to a recently article in the WashingtonPost where they cite “abundant land and cheap food” as reasons for our incredible height.
And things were going great until millennials came along, according to the data. Their article titled ‘why are Americans getting shorter?’ takes an interesting look at historical trends and how Americans, both men and women, have been shrinking due to a variety of factors from obesity to immigration, etc.
What their research turned up is the major inflection point in Americans getting shorter came at the start of the 1980s:
Following this method, the turning point becomes immediately and painfully clear: Around 1980, even native-born White men and women started getting shorter. (We’re looking specifically at Whites because they have the most robust data.)
And what term do we use for people born after 1980? Millennials! Incredibly, that generation is ground zero for American’s shrinking problem. Here at the Department of Data, we’ve developed an expertise in the ways millennials stand out in U.S. data, and it nonetheless took a world-famous authority to help us notice this one!
They go on to discuss how childhood obesity began to spike in the 1980s as well with Millennials and pinpoint childhood obesity (in Millennials) and nutrition as being key factors in Americans getting shorter.
Another key factor is the cost of healthcare. The cost of healthcare has been spiking since Ronald Reagan was the President. How exactly does that relate to the average height of Americans? WaPo spoke with some experts and here’s what they had to say:
What does inequality have to do with height? Komlos explains that we lose more height to poverty that we gain from extreme wealth. If you make $200,000 a year, an extra $1,000 won’t make much difference in your household budget. But if you make $15,000 a year, losing $1,000 will take a substantial bite out of how well you can care for your kids. So, increasing inequality will push our average height ever lower even if average incomes and economic growth remain steady.
Looking at the data, they found the heights of people with a bachelor’s degree (or higher) has remained virtually unchanged while the heights of people with no college degrees have been falling off a cliff. They sum it up by saying “If you’re given the resources you need to reach your full potential height, you’re also getting the resources you need to succeed in school and beyond.”
If true, that’s a pretty big revelation but one that will surely not influence any change with the government who despises data almost as much as it hates change.