My guess - the biggest factors in height are genetics and childhood nutrition.

Children born in China and India in the 70s would have a decent chance of experiencing malnutrition, stunting their growth. This created the space to explain the increase in heights seen in these countries over time, as they benefitted from technological advancements, more liberal governments, and the increased wealth from integrating into global supply chains.

Germany, the UK, and the US had already mostly solved their food insecurity problems by 1970, and so saw little increase in height in that period. The differences in height between these nations is probably due to greater genetic diversity in the latter two populations. Northern Europeans tend to be taller than global average, but the US has a significant Latino minority, and the UK has populations from its former colonies. I'm guessing the dip/flattening in the US's line around 2000 was mostly due to the surge in Mexican migrants around that time.

I don't know what tf happened in the Netherlands.

The benefits of a nutritionally complete youth?

how to manipulate graphs 101

Wow its almost like mean height is affected by poverty and nutrition or something

Now do weight ...

The Dutch are incredible. Once upon a time they were the shortest people in Europe. Now they are the tallest in the entire world.

Crazy! Did the small chinese hight come from malnourishment or hard labor? Otherwise that increase would be hard to describe right?

the US doesn’t use cm

This is really fascinating!

welwp, at 186cm i'm about average in The Netherlands.

It shows americans growing after a decline, this study from 2025 shows they're still getting smaller

What a weird set of countries.