Black women in U.S. shrink in stature, data show

The height difference between black and white women appears to be increasing.

Chicago Tribune

CHICAGO — Call her The Incredible Shrinking African-American Woman.

In an age when the adult populations of most industrialized nations have grown significantly taller, the average height of black women in the U.S. has been receding, beginning with those born in the late 1960s.

The difference in stature between white women and black women has now stretched to three-quarters of an inch and appears to be increasing, according to newly released data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey conducted by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The main culprit appears to be diet.

The average height of a black woman born in the 1980s is just under 5 feet 4 inches; her mother, born in the 1960s, is more than half an inch taller. Even her grandmother, born in the 1940s, is a bit taller. The average white woman born in the 1980s is about half an inch taller than her mother.

The gap is “truly phenomenal,” according to John Komlos, an economist and historian who has made a specialty of studying human heights. “Such a steep decline is practically unprecedented in modern U.S. history.”

You have to go back to the antebellum South to find a similar shrinkage. The generation of white men born in the 1840s who experienced the ravages of the Civil War lost nearly an inch to their Northern counterparts, Komlos said.

A Chicago native who is a professor at the University of Munich, Komlos made a name for himself several years ago when his research revealed that the average height of adult Americans, once the tallest folk to roam the planet, had stopped rising after World War II and has since been surpassed by that of several European nations. The Dutch now lay claim to the title of tallest.

Komlos’ latest findings, based on the NHANES data, suggest that after nearly 25 years of stagnation, the average height of adult Americans born from 1975 to 1986 has edged up again — with the exception of black women, whose height is moving in the opposite direction.

The reason this matters, according to Komlos, is because “height is a very good overall indicator of how well the human organism thrives in its socioeconomic environment.”

His argument is bolstered by another discovery: Though the heights of low- and middle-income black women are plummeting, upper-income black women are growing taller.

and rapidly closing the gap with their white counterparts.