Interesting New Yorker article, found via Alex at Marginal Revolution, discussing the fact that Europeans are growing taller, but Americans are not. The article claims that any population can grow to the same height as any other (height is not genetic, but based on nutrition), and concludes that Americans are not growing taller due to societal inequities that lead to bad nutrition and health care for the poor.
I am dubious on both points. Jews, or at least Askhenazic Jews, are short. And not just elderly Jews, but Jews of my generation. It’s true in the United States, and, from what I saw when I was in Israel, it’s true there, too. I don’t have statistics on the subject, but I know from experience that at 5′ 7″ or so, I’m taller than 85% or more of Jewish women, and am not far from the median (I would estimate 5′ 8-9″) for Jewish men. When I dated a 5′ 10″ woman, she was often the tallest individual, male or female, in a synagogue or other Jewish venue. Yet American Jews, by all accounts, are the wealthiest ethnic group in the wealthiest country in the world. If there is no group genetic component to height, and all that’s holding back Americans’ height is societal inequality, shouldn’t Jews be the dominant force in the NBA? Ironically, Professor Komlos, the star of the New Yorker article noted above, is a 5’6″ Hungarian Jew who “blames” his short stature on deprivation during the Nazi period. Yet he is not especially short for a Jewish man. So height researchers, back to the drawing boards; you have found an interesting phenomenon, but you have not explained it.
UPDATE: I’ve gotten many emails suggesting that I must be misconstruing the relevant research, that of course there can be some significant differences in height among ethnic groups, even if nutrition can account for most of the differences we used to think were genetic. So let me quote from the New Yorker article (which may itself be misrepresenting the research, but it’s all I have to go on): “Around the world, well-fed children differ in height by less than half an inch. In a few, rare cases, an entire people may share the same growth disorder. African Pygmies, for instance, produce too few growth hormones and the proteins that bind them to tissues, so they can’t break five feet even on the best of diets. By and large, though, any population can grow as tall as any other.”
Comments are closed.