Wacky news Why are the Dutch so tall?

There are so mazny factors at play:
we know already: genetics, food - but others factors are at play too: social sharing or lack of sharing, religion (number of children, anti-abort...: in not religious milieux children of whealthy people are rather scarce), sportive activities and physical work, and age of these physical activities and so on...
at one time, Dutch people were rather sharing their economic success even if it was not always ydillic, maybe with immigration some conditions are changing?
The genetic input seems confirmed by the relatively stable differences between regions of the Netherlands, which surely are more marked in countryside than in big towns.

Really I think this is the clue Moesan:

The Dutch are so tall due to high living standards, excellent health care, and natural selection. High living standards allowed the Dutch to afford high-quality nutrition, and their superb health care prevented many childhood diseases. In addition, tall Dutch men and women have relatively more children, further increasing average heights.

I guess you could see the Dutch have reached a kind of welfare in which the max of the natural conditioned height has been reached? In earlier days as now the North Dutch provinces, not coincidentally the old Single Grave Culture hotspots (?), contain the tallest population.

Especially in my city, with about 50.000 students you will be surprised (as many visitors do) about the large lads cycling around :LOL: (and of course most students are from middle class and higher).

And it's indeed due to largely welfare spread. I guess you can see in the graphics of the initial posting and that of firetown that in periods of economic wealth combined with Keynesianism, in the period 1945-1975 with kind of social redistribution (Golden years?).

And it's partly because social climbing, with middle class life style that was dominant in most of the labor population. Small nuclear families.

And we see also some kind of paternalistic health care. So nearly every child gets vaccinated health care is easy accessible etc etc. And some private thing. My grandparents were labor people. After my grandfather and grandmother had a second child, the doctor's comment was: "Now put cement in it" I hope I don't have to explain the blunt comment :LOL:, but the message was clear hahahah How to create petit bourgeois attitude among labor people. And since the 17th century even the Dutch laborers were kind of petit bourgeois (most of them).

But well the result of this all, small families (easier to feed some in a good way than many), better opportunities especially when the welfare state did make a giant leap.

And the immigrants? Most of them are smaller than Dutch average (that's mostly 'nature'). Nevertheless we also see a spurt among them. Most obvious this is the case with for example adopted persons. There is a TV show in which adopted persons discover their roots from the fare East to Latin America, and we always see 'giants' of people meeting their much smaller families in their homeland.

One way or another wealth and the redistribution of wealth and a middle class life style did end in a spurt in tallness.

And yes with the introduction with some (softened compared to the UK or US but still) kind of neoliberalism. Yesterday in the news: nowadays the richest people in the Netherlands pay much lower amounts of taxes compared to middle and lower class, this mus have effect on the general length (because it's a return to privileges and does effect health etc). I guess this has also made a contribution to the slight shrinkage. We are not the welfare state we were used to be.

I guess this is an objective sign: if the general welfare in all its aspect is prosperous than the length of the whole population is rising. And reverse. I consider this almost like a fact (whether this is ideologically convenient for people or not).

The yardstick does not lie Moesan!
 
Last edited:
I agree for the most, Northerner, but I'm almost sure that even if we should return to 1945's conditions of life concerning health and nutrition for respectively same social groups percentages, our descendants would still be higher statured than their ascendants of those times. For other reasons.
 
The Guardian article:
“But growth also stagnated in the generations in which both parents were born in the Netherlands, and in the generations in which all four grandparents were born in the Netherlands. Men without a migration background did not get any taller and women without a migration background show a downward trend.”

That seems to be what recent stats have revealed.
 
Puts things in perspective.

I always think of myself as relatively short, and yet I'm 167cm.

The bottom end must be East Asians, Amerindian admixed, perhaps?

I'm intrigued by the whole, shorter women more fertile, idea. Could more estrogen suppress height in some way?

Average height will probably continue to increase a little bit as older generation with lower height average die off, but it does look like we are headed for a definite standstill.
From a BBC article:
The peak number of children, 2.57, was found in men who were 177.79cm. Men who were 6cm taller or shorter (coming in at approximately 5ft 7in or 6ft) had 2.52 children. Going another 6cm away from the peak gave 2.36 children on average.
https://www.google.com/search?q=do+...ome..69i57.25177j1j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8
It does make sense. As you said, do women really want a dance partner 1 foot taller than them?
 
No, I don't think they do.

Just a fun fact: Chris Hemsworth (Thor), who would have had almost limitless choices in a mate, chose a 5'3" Spanish woman. I mean, she's gorgeous, and she may have a wonderful personality as well, but as I said, he had limitless choices, so was part of it an unconscious desire to bring the height in his family back to the norm?

3172576E00000578-3458265-Selling_up_Chris_Hemsworth_and_wife_Else_Pataky_have_reportedly_-a-1_1456147011994.jpg



Fwiw, I don't think any of us have hit on what changed for the Dutch starting in 1950 that didn't change for the Germans, Swedes etc. who would have pretty similar genetics.
 
No, I don't think they do.

Just a fun fact: Chris Hemsworth (Thor), who would have had almost limitless choices in a mate, chose a 5'3" Spanish woman. I mean, she's gorgeous, and she may have a wonderful personality as well, but as I said, he had limitless choices, so was part of it an unconscious desire to bring the height in his family back to the norm?

3172576E00000578-3458265-Selling_up_Chris_Hemsworth_and_wife_Else_Pataky_have_reportedly_-a-1_1456147011994.jpg



Fwiw, I don't think any of us have hit on what changed for the Dutch starting in 1950 that didn't change for the Germans, Swedes etc. who would have pretty similar genetics.

I was asked years ago in an interview what it was that made a woman attractive... my answer was ENERGY...
 
another aspect we don't speak of here is the exageration (I think I see) of statures oppositions in a pop between high and low statures:
it has little effect upon average statures ; it could be due to mating questions?
People said that men and women were often looking for opposite patterns (often true for pigmentation) but in fact, as said 'firetown', some barriers exist in choices of sex and wedding partners, avoiding big females to took too small males (it occurs rather when the small man is rich!), and so decreasing the weight of 'middle' statures in a pop.
 
I was asked years ago in an interview what it was that made a woman attractive... my answer was ENERGY...

Ah...But what kind of energy? :)

My husband really liked Joan Collins too, but I thought it was just part of his "thing" for older women, of which I was always sort of aware.

I don't think he would have found her "energy" in me; when I was young, before life hardened me, I was quite a bit different than I am today. The other day I found my high school yearbook. I was described by boys from our brother school as pretty, feminine and soft-spoken. The girls from my own school described me as intelligent, ambitious, argumentative, and brave, the latter probably for standing up to the nuns when I thought they were wrong in their enforcement of some of the rules, and argumentative for my questions in theology class. Was I so different in an all girls setting where I could let out my more assertive side, or do men and women see different qualities in people of the opposite sex or was it just a question of setting?
 
I honestly believe that one major component is which types of men women prefer to have children with.

100% agree with you, only cant upvote your coment for some reason, dutch height was increasing even during periods of war and famine so diet is not the main factor.
 
100% agree with you, only cant upvote your coment for some reason, dutch height was increasing even during periods of war and famine so diet is not the main factor.

Interesting. And yes, I also do not put too much on diet when it comes to direct effect on height during growth.
I knew a lot of tall and very skinny dudes in high school weighing a lot less than some much shorter than them.
 
According to Forbes:
body height is, indeed, associated with higher salary income.” To be exact, the researchers estimate that each additional centimeter of height is associated with a 1.30% increase in annual income
Financial security as additional contributor to having that "extra child".
 
Was I so different in an all girls setting where I could let out my more assertive side, or do men and women see different qualities in people of the opposite sex or was it just a question of setting?
From my first day of school, I was extremely different towards boys vs. towards girls.
I could be myself with girls and be relaxed. With boys there was always the competitiveness over everything that I couldn't really understand, so I became extremely defensive, oftentimes aggressive. That hasn't changed much over the years.
 
According to Forbes:

Financial security as additional contributor to having that "extra child".

F.S. contributes to increase in stature of posterity, AND increase in stature often contributes to F.S. increase. Socially stature is not neutral as we know.
Concerning the links with more children it could depends of social strates: in the middle ones, F.S. effect can play; in the very lowest classes, defect of F.S. is not always an obstacle to "fertility", helas, I would say...
 
F.S. contributes to increase in stature of posterity, AND increase in stature often contributes to F.S. increase. Socially stature is not neutral as we know.
Concerning the links with more children it could depends of social strates: in the middle ones, F.S. effect can play; in the very lowest classes, defect of F.S. is not always an obstacle to "fertility", helas, I would say...
Would you mind telling us what you are referring to with the acronym F.S.?
 
In the link to the New Yorker, Angela provided the answer is told:

Holland, like the rest of Northern Europe, had simply managed to spread its prosperity around. These days, Dutch heights no longer keep pace with the economy. (“We can’t grow to four metres just because our income quadruples,” Drukker says.) But the essential equation is the same: when the G.N.P. grows, everyone grows.


As America’s rich and poor drift further apart, its growth curve may be headed in the opposite direction, Komlos and others say. The eight million Americans without a job, the forty million without health insurance, the thirty-five million who live below the poverty line are surely having trouble measuring up. And they’re not alone. As more and more Americans turn to a fast-food diet, its effects may be creeping up the social ladder, so that even the wealthy are growing wider rather than taller.

Nice too see something of Jan Willen Drukker I had college economic history from....long time ago.
 
I'll ignore the inappropriate and unnecessary political swipes at the U.S. because you obviously just can't help yourself and stick to the thread topic.

That is NOT the answer, or not the complete one. The increase started in the 50s. The standard of living has been just as high in neighboring Germany and Scandinavia, and yet they are not as tall.

So, either it has to do with some alleles which the Dutch have but Germans and Swedes, for example, do not, or despite your protestations, something was added to the milk and milk products, or just a lot more of them are consumed.

That, or we'd have to quote, and say, "It's...a mystery".
 
I'll ignore the inappropriate and unnecessary political swipes at the U.S. because you obviously just can't help yourself and stick to the thread topic.

That is NOT the answer, or not the complete one. The increase started in the 50s. The standard of living has been just as high in neighboring Germany and Scandinavia, and yet they are not as tall.

So, either it has to do with some alleles which the Dutch have but Germans and Swedes, for example, do not, or despite your protestations, something was added to the milk and milk products, or just a lot more of them are consumed.

That, or we'd have to quote, and say, "It's...a mystery".

It's a quote Angela, linked by your initial posting. I could not resist to quote my old teacher!

So, either it has to do with some alleles which the Dutch have but Germans and Swedes, for example, do not, or despite your protestations, something was added to the milk and milk products, or just a lot more of them are consumed.

Is not differentiated form the past. I guess when the Dutch were accelerating (1980) the diversity was bigger than in (1950), let alone before that.

So one way or another the welfare state, with it's distribution function, has to play a key part too.....
 
do not, or despite your protestations, something was added to the milk and milk products, or just a lot more of them are consumed.

I did some 'research', I think it's more the milk consumption and the fluctuations in it, than some kind of added hormones.

This is the consumption of milk in the Netherlands, it peaked just after ww2:


This was unto the eighties heavily promoted, drink three glasses a day!


Eighties:

That was also because the Dutch farmers produced lots of it.

But as you can see it dropped.

But there are some regional differences, the North drinks a lot more milk than the South. In these the genetic factor plays also a part, the North is old Single Grave hotspot.

More detailed, with North South, BMI, education grade and milk consumption sorry only in Dutch, but with visuals:
https://www.wateetnederland.nl/resu...eten meer zuivel (362,melk of yoghurt per dag.

Personally I'm an example of this all. I'm 6 feet 4 (193cm). as an adolescent I sometimes consumed a liter of custard (after diner....). So called vla, I can tell you that's really heavy stuff: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vla .:p I shot unto the sky at that age with unto now still visible growth stripes around my knees.
 
Last edited:

This thread has been viewed 21588 times.

Back
Top