Dutch stature in detail

**The Black Prince** · 09-09-2009, 08:18 PM

Trends

Throughout the 1990's and the early years of the 21th century the Dutch had the worldwide tallest avg. stature per nation. Lately the now independant Montenegrins joined the nationlists for human stature and the Dutch had to step one place down. Reason the Montenegrins are just taller. (Source)

Figure 1: Dutch trend over long period (Source CBS)

Table 1: Dutch stature. seperated by age and gender. (Source CBS)

However Dutch stature seems to be stabilising or declining somewhat for the last few years (see figure 1) For more detail I provided a table beneath the figure showing 2004-2009 (see table 1).

In 2004 the stature of males where 183.6cm (15-25 yr) and 182.5cm (25-45 yr), while in 2009 the males measured 182.6cm (15-25 yr) and 182.9cm (25-45 yr). The previous so tall ones now seem to have joined the ranks of the middle-aged, while the new adolescents are on average 1.0cm smaller.

Per province

Another interesting detail is the stature per Dutch province. The Netherlands are a small country, even for European standards, and one would suspect not much difference from the west to the east (ca. 125km) or from the north to the south (ca 330km). However in earlier days there was quite a difference especially when speaking of the northern provinces above the Rhine and the southern provinces below the Rhine (Zeeland, Brabant and Limburg). F.i. in 1965 the males in the three southern provinces where on average ca. 175cm in stature, while those in the northern ca. 178cm measured.

This difference between north and south is still there, although on a decline, the males from the three southern provinces are on average 2cm shorter as the northern (see figure 2). However one would suspect that with the growing economy and growing use of new ways of faster transportation during the second half of the 20th century, people from the various provinces would move in with each other easier over larger distances, differences would fade quicker. And secondly with the growing wealth the diet improved during the last 50 years, so nutritional deficiency shouldn't be the main reason anymore between differences in average stature per province. Earlier the diet was mentioned as the cause of the difference in stature between the poor Catholic southern provinces and the more wealthy Protestant northern provinces.

Figure 2: Stature of the Dutch over all ages per province in 2003-2006, the three provinces below the Rhine (Zeeland, Brabant and Limburg) are on the right side. The term 'Enkel autochtonen' means only Indigenous Dutch (parents and grandparents are born Dutch). (Source CBS)