HEIGHT AND WEIGHT OF BRITISH MEN

Abstract

Data on the heights and weights of men in two industrial populations (one in Birmingham measured in 1960, and one in Port Talbot measured in 1965) are compared with published data from two earlier national surveys (in 1930 and 1943). Data from Western Europe point to a secular increase in adult male height of about 1 in. per generation (25 years) since 1850. Our data suggest that an increase of the same magnitude is still in progress. Height declined regularly with age, to the extent that men of 60-64 were about 2 in. shorter than men of 20-24. We consider that this is largely a cohort effect due to the secular increase in adult stature and little to do with a decline in height with age in the individual. Weight seems to be increasing at a much greater rate than height, so that the adult male population is becoming progressively more obese. Young and middle-aged men today are probably about 15 lb. heavier than men of the same age and same height 30 years ago. In the earlier surveys obesity increased regularly with age until at least 55 years of age. In our studies obesity increased with age only until about 35, after which it flattened off. It seems that cohorts of increasingly obese young men are moving into the adult population, so we present a table of the body-weigh per in. of height for employed men of different ages from our survey of 1965 more as a warning than as a standard for “normal” weights.