American's Are Shrinking

New York Times Excerpt:
Just like with the North Koreans and South Koreans, the height gap between Americans and Europeans is a relatively new development. The New Yorker article notes that the average American soldier during World War I was still two inches taller than the average German. But sometime around 1955, the data began to shift. The Germans and other Europeans grew an extra two centimeters a decade, or a little under an inch, and some Asian populations several times more, yet Americans haven’t grown taller in 50 years.

According to Mr. Bilger, researchers have found that Americans lose the most height to Northern Europeans in infancy and adolescence, “which implicates pre- and post-natal care and teenage eating habits.”

As America’s rich and poor drift further apart, its growth curve may be headed in the opposite direction…. The eight million Americans without a job, the 40 million without health insurance, the 35 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.

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