Why Are the Dutch the Tallest People on Earth?

In the early nineteenth century, a Dutch military recruit was a fairly small man. The average stood around 168 cm, placing the Netherlands near the bottom of the European rankings, shorter than the French, shorter than the Germans, and considerably shorter than the Americans, who were then the tallest people in the world.

Today Dutch men average about 184 cm and Dutch women about 171 cm, the highest national figures recorded anywhere. Over roughly 150 years, the population gained close to 20 centimetres.

That is an extraordinary rate of change for a human population, and it happened far too quickly to be explained by genetics alone. Working out what did cause it has occupied researchers for decades, and the answer turns out to involve at least four separate forces pushing in the same direction.

Compare your height to the Dutch average →

The Scale of the Change

Some context for how unusual this is.

A twenty-centimetre shift in six or seven generations is not something evolution does on its own. Genetic change in a large population moves far more slowly than that. Whatever happened in the Netherlands, most of it happened in the environment.

For the wider picture on where other countries sit, see our guide to average heights by country.

Cause One: Dairy

The explanation most people have heard is milk, and it holds up reasonably well.

The Netherlands built one of the most productive dairy industries in the world, and Dutch per-capita consumption of milk and dairy products has been high for generations. The relevant mechanism is nutritional rather than folkloric: milk protein is unusually rich in leucine, an amino acid that stimulates bone and muscle growth more effectively than most plant proteins.

Childhood is when this matters. Growth plates only stay open for a limited window, and protein availability during that window is one of the strongest environmental determinants of final adult height. A population with abundant, cheap, high-quality protein for children will trend taller than one without.

Dairy alone does not explain twenty centimetres. But it is a real contributor, and it arrived early.

Cause Two: Public Health and Prosperity

This factor is less memorable than milk and probably did more work.

Height is often described by economic historians as a proxy for childhood conditions, because reaching your full genetic potential requires that nothing interfere during growth. Repeated childhood illness, poor sanitation, contaminated water and inadequate healthcare all divert energy away from growing.

Over the same period the Netherlands built comprehensive sanitation, near-universal healthcare access, and one of the most equal income distributions in Europe. That last point matters more than it might appear. Average height responds strongly to how the poorest children in a society live, because they are the ones whose growth is being suppressed. A country that lifts the bottom of its distribution raises its national average far more than one that enriches the top.

This is the leading explanation for a related puzzle: why American average height stalled. The United States led the world in the nineteenth century and has since been overtaken by much of northern Europe, with the average for American men settling around 175 to 177 cm. Prosperity kept rising, but the distribution of childhood conditions did not improve in the same way.

Cause Three: Natural Selection, Genuinely

Here the story takes an unexpected turn, and it is the part that made headlines.

A study reported by Science examined 42,616 people over the age of 45, all born in the Netherlands to Dutch-born parents, and looked at how height related to reproductive success. The finding: taller Dutch men had, on average, more children than shorter Dutch men.

If a trait is heritable and correlates with having more offspring, that is natural selection operating in real time. Over several generations it produces a measurable shift in the population's genetic distribution toward the favoured trait.

Two caveats are worth keeping in mind. The effect is small compared with the nutritional and public health contributions, and it would take many more generations to account for anything like twenty centimetres on its own. It is also a specifically Dutch finding, and interestingly the opposite pattern has been observed elsewhere. In several other populations, average-height men have shown the highest reproductive success rather than the tallest.

Still, it is a rare and well-documented case of contemporary selection in a modern human population, which is why it drew attention.

Cause Four: Everything Reinforcing Everything Else

The honest summary from the research is that no single factor did this. Dutch height is the compound result of genetics, childhood nutrition, sanitation, healthcare access, national prosperity, relative social equality, and a modest evolutionary nudge, all pointing the same direction over a century and a half.

That is less satisfying than a single answer, but it explains why the effect is so hard to replicate deliberately. There is no lever to pull.

Has It Stopped?

There are signs it has. Dutch average height appears to have plateaued in recent decades and by some measurements has ticked very slightly downward.

The likely explanation is that environmental limits have been reached. Once childhood nutrition, sanitation and healthcare are close to optimal for essentially the whole population, there is nothing left for the environment to fix, and the population is expressing close to its genetic ceiling. Further gains would have to come from the genetic side, which moves slowly.

Immigration has also changed the composition of the population being measured, which affects national averages independently of anything happening to individuals.

What This Means for Your Own Height

Two things worth taking from it.

First, if you are noticeably taller than your grandparents, that is not unusual and it is mostly environmental. Most of the developed world has run a smaller version of the Dutch experiment over the past century.

Second, your percentile depends entirely on where you are standing. A man of 180 cm is above average in most of the world and slightly below average in the Netherlands. The number never changes; the comparison does.

Find your height percentile → or compare yourself to national averages.

Frequently Asked Questions

1. How tall is the average Dutch person?

Dutch men average around 184 cm and Dutch women around 171 cm, the highest national averages recorded.

2. Why are the Dutch so tall?

Research points to a combination of factors rather than one cause: a dairy-rich diet high in leucine, excellent childhood healthcare and sanitation, high and relatively evenly distributed prosperity, and evidence of mild natural selection favouring taller men.

3. Were the Dutch always tall?

No. In the early nineteenth century the Dutch averaged around 168 cm and were among the shorter populations in Europe. The gain of roughly 20 cm happened over about 150 years.

4. Does drinking milk make you taller?

Not by itself, and not in adults. Milk protein is rich in leucine, which supports bone and muscle growth, so adequate protein during childhood helps a person reach their genetic potential. It cannot raise that potential, and it does nothing once growth plates have closed.

5. Why did Americans stop getting taller?

American average height led the world in the nineteenth century and then plateaued around 175 to 177 cm for men. The most common explanation is that average height responds to conditions among the poorest children, and improvements there did not keep pace with other wealthy countries.

6. Is Dutch height caused by genetics?

Partly, but genetics cannot explain a 20 cm change in six generations. Most of the increase is environmental, with a smaller genetic contribution including the documented selection effect favouring taller men.

7. Are the Dutch still getting taller?

Apparently not. Dutch height has plateaued in recent decades, most likely because childhood nutrition and healthcare have reached the point where the environment is no longer limiting growth.

8. Which country has the shortest average height?

Several countries in South and Southeast Asia and parts of Latin America record national averages more than 20 cm below the Dutch figure, a spread larger than the gap between the 5th and 95th percentile within most individual countries.

9. Can a country's average height decrease?

Yes. Averages can fall through economic hardship affecting childhood nutrition, or shift through changes in population composition such as migration.

The Short Version

The Dutch got tall because for roughly a century and a half, almost nothing stood in the way of Dutch children growing. Good protein, clean water, accessible medicine, and a society where the poorest kids were not left far behind the richest.

The milk gets the credit because it makes a better story. The plumbing and the healthcare probably did more.

See how you compare →

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Sources: average height figures and historical comparison from Body Worlds Amsterdam; the natural selection study of 42,616 Dutch adults reported by Science; nutritional mechanism via Fisher Scientific's Headline Discoveries.