You cannot rebut statistical studies by walking around and noting what you see.
I know that this is an anecdote and not statistic, but when I went to an event last year, where most participants were in their late teens, I, at 5’11" felt small. It may be that the selection was biased towards youngsters that have a healthy lifestyle, but I do get the impression that young people today are taller.
Was the event a basketball tournament? 
I’m not sure there’s strong correlation between height and health.
When I see a guy my height, he looks short. I’m 5’6", so I guess he is short. I wonder how us short guys look to the 6’6" crowd?
I don’t notice. Everyone between 5’2" and 5’10" is the same height as far as I’m concerned.
Yeah, but you’re not 6’6" … you’re taller. Clearly not the same thing!
Not quite what I meant. More that maybe the short fat ones tend to be more likely to stay home playing video games rather than camping out in a field.
Do we in fact know that the distribution of heights is symmetrical about the average? It’s an easy assumption to make but it may not be true.
I’m 5’10 when I’m using good posture. So right at the supposed average. I see many men taller than me. I seem to see fewer who are shorter.
Echoing bob++ I’d say there’s a bias towards people younger than me being more likely to be taller than shorter whereas folks older than me tend the other way. I’m at the age where I haven’t started shrinking. Yet.
Another factor is “who is an American?” Around here we have a huge Latin immigrant presence. Most of whom are fairly short.
If the OP is citing a study that’s looking just at Caucasians but he lives in a different mix (or vice versa) there could be a pretty significant difference right there.
And finally, as by others above, personal anecdote (including mine) are *not *statistically reliable data. Period Amen. The USA is far larger and more diverse than any one person can randomly experience a valid sample from.
I’m 6’5", and according to https://tall.life/height-percentile-calculator-age-country/ I am, by USA standards, " Tall - 99.559 Percentile".
I always notice when I see someone I don’t know that is my height or taller.
In my case, those people “stick out”, so the relative number of them probably seems greater to me than it really is.
Before I tried that tool, I would have guessed I was 95-97th percentile, not 99.5+.
This over-estimating the numbers taller than you may be true for more than just me.
I never got that user name until just now.
Your impression is wrong, age-specific heights for US men topped out at 5’10’’ in the mid 1990s, and has been slowly declining since then (to 5’9.7’'). I would guess this mostly reflects migration from Mexico, India, Central America and East Asia, since height in those countries is shorter than in America. The NPR article also mentions increased income inequality.
Wouldn’t that also be true of the tall fat ones?
There are way more people at the very short end than there are at the very top end-- people with most forms of dwarvism have normal or near-normal lifespans, but people with gigantism have shortened lifespans. Not to mention that 5’10 is not the median in the first place, even discounting the short lifespans of extremely tall people. There are a lot more people who never get taller than 3’10, than there are people who are ever reach 7’10 in the first place, especially in the US. Dwarfism is just more common than gigantism. So the median is probably a little higher than the average.
RivkahChaya writes:
> There are a lot more people who never get taller than 3’10, than there are people who are ever reach 7’10 in the first place, especially in
> the US.
Cite?
That’s really just common sense.
No, it isn’t. There’s a difference between giving a citation and telling the person asking for one that you can’t be bothered with a citation. Look, here’s a list which indicates that there are only seven living men known to be over 7’ 10":
The first list here gives five living men under 3’ 10":
The second list gives another three living men under 3’ 10":
So there are at least eight. That’s a citation. So it is apparently true that there are more men under 3’ 10" than over 7’ 10".
I’m 6’3". I often think that people who are a little shorter than I am are actually taller than me. I suspect this is due to the fact that my impression of their height is gained by me looking to the tops of their heads–and because my eyes are (of course) set, what, about three inches below the tip of my scalp, I’m looking up at them to gauge their height. Thus, they appear taller.
And it absolutely matters who you are thinking about when you’re trying to determine the “average” height. I like to pose this question to my college students (stats and data classes in a math methods course): “Okay, we know that thanks to better nutrition, the eradication of many childhood illnesses, and other factors, heights of people in the US have typically been rising for several generations. But here in <name of community,> I believe that has changed. I don’t have incontrovertible statistics, but I am quite sure that for the first time in many decades, the average height of men here has dropped in the last 20 years. What’s going on?”
They immediately focus on welfare cuts, a sedentary lifestyle, too much fast food. But the answer’s much simpler. Back in the nineties the population were was about 60% white and 40% black, with very few “other.” Today, it’s about 20% “other,” that “other” being mostly Mexican, and Mexicans from a place where men are often about five feet tall and very rarely exceed 5’6".
If you live in a neighborhood where there aren’t many immigrants with “short” genes, it’s probably easy to conclude that the average American man is pretty tall. It’s harder to draw that conclusion if your community includes lots of short immigrants.
That works the other way too. As I said upthread, I’m about 5’10"; very close to the US male average.
I spent 3 years living and working in the poorer parts of Central America. It was amazing to wander around town a full head taller than most of the people I saw. I was a giant! woot!!
Then I came back to part of the US with few Hispanics and suddenly I was average height at best. It was weird getting used to both transitions.
I’m 5’11” and I feel I’m taller than most adult men I meet. I would guess somewhere around 60th percentile or so, maybe slightly higher. 5’9 1/2 would have been my guess for average adult male height in the US.