Child Height Development in the Past Half Century in North East Asia: Animal Protein and Other Essential Nutrients

Abstract

Economies in North-East Asia made rapid progress after WW II. Japan was the first-runner, followed by South Korea with some two-decade-lag due to the Korean War (1950-53). As the standard of living, food supply in particular, improved, children grew taller in height unprecedentedly, by more than 10cm in a half-century. Male teens in Japan were 2-3cm taller in mean height than their Korean peers in the 1960-70s but ceased to grow any taller in the early-1990s, whereas Korean teens kept growing taller vigorously, to overtake their Japanese peers by 3cm in the mid-2000s and then ceased to grow taller afterwards. Economy in South Korea has kept very prosperous toward the end of the 2010s and supply of animal-sourced foods kept increasing steadily. When growth patterns of boys’ height from 1st graders in primary school to seniors in high school examined for the two countries, velocity began to decline steadily in South Korea in the early-2000s, to be appreciably slower than their Japanese peers toward the end of the 2010s. As pre-school boys in South Korea were significantly taller than their Japanese peers in the mid-2000s, Korean teens were still taller than their Japanese peers in the end of the 2010s, but it could be predicted that the height advantage of Korean teens over their Japanese peers would not last in the future decades.