According to a study by the country’s statistical office, the generation of Dutch born in 2001 is smaller than those born in 1980.
Tall Dutch 19-year-old men now have an average height of 182.9 cm, and women – an average of 169.3 cm.
Factors such as immigration and nutrition are likely to be responsible for the change in growth that reverses a century and a half of rapid growth, the study said.
“In the last century, we have become higher and higher, but since 1980, growth has stopped,” the text reads. “Men born in 2001 are on average 1 cm lower than the generation of 1980, women – 1.4 cm.”
But not all is lost.
“The Netherlands is still the highest country in the world,” the Central Bureau said in a statement.
According to data for 2020, the Dutch are ahead of Montenegro, Estonia and Bosnia, and women are ahead of Montenegro, Denmark and Iceland according to data for 2020.
The lowest rates for men – in East Timor, and for women – in Guatemala.
The general reasons for the reduction of the Netherlands are not entirely clear. One reason is immigration, “especially of people of non-Western origin,” which, according to the study, is on average lower. But growth has also “stalled” among Dutch people whose parents, grandparents were born in the Netherlands, the release said.
The study is based on the self-measurements of 719,000 Dutch people aged 19 to 60 years.
The Dutch were not always so tall. In the early 19th century, they were low by European standards and began to grow only after 1840.
A century ago, the titles of the highest people belonged to the United States and Scandinavia, and only the generation born in the late 1950s inherited this title from the Dutch.