Is 5''11 Tall for Men and Women in the US?

Is 5'11" Tall for Men and Women in the US?

A question of population comparison

The short answer is yes, but only if you're comparing to other men. If you're comparing to women, it's unusually tall.

In a recent post, I asked:

How tall are people in the US? The average height of adult males is around 5 feet 9 inches (175 cm), while that of females is about 5 feet 4 inches (163 cm). A little over half of American adults are between 5 feet 6 inches and 5 feet 10 inches tall.

And in response, someone wrote:

I'm 5'11", which is pretty tall compared to most Americans.

So now I want to ask: Is 5’11” tall for men and women in the US?

The short answer is yes, but only if you’re comparing to other men. If you’re comparing to women, it’s unusually tall.

Let me explain why.

Height statistics for US men and women

First, we need to look at the data from NHANES. This is a survey conducted by the National Center for Health Statistics, and it’s one of the few sources of detailed height statistics for the US. It has measured heights for civilian noninstitutionalized adults aged 20+. For males, this means an average height of 175.1 cm, or 5 feet 9 inches. The male P75 cutoff (the point below which 75% of all men fall) is 180.1 cm, or 5 feet 11 inches. So being 5 feet 11 inches is above the average for US men, and reasonably described as relatively tall. One inch is exactly 2.54 cm, so 71 inches is 180.34 cm, exactly 2.54 cm below six feet. These are conversions, not new measurements. That puts you between P75 and P85 (183.0 cm) for men aged 20+. The published cutoffs don’t give you an exact percentile.

For females, the average height is 161.2 cm, or 5 feet 3 inches. The female P95 cutoff (the point below which 95% of all women fall) is 172.5 cm, or 5 feet 8 inches. So 5 feet 11 inches is taller than both the average and the upper cut-off for women. That makes it unusually tall relative to US women.

Height across different age groups

You can see how this plays out across different age groups. Here are the male and female percentiles for ages 20–29:

Male age 20–29 median: 176.1 cm (5 ft 9 in)

Male age 20–29 P75: 181.0 cm (5 ft 11 in)

Female age 20–29 P95: 174.6 cm (5 ft 9 in)

So again, being 5 feet 11 inches is above the average for men, and also above the upper tail of the distribution for women. But when you compare younger adults with all adults, you see some changes:

Male age 20–29 median: 176.1 cm (5 ft 9 in)

Male age 20–29 P75: 181.0 cm (5 ft 11 in)

Male age 20+ mean: 175.1 cm (5 ft 9 in)

Male age 20+ P75: 180.1 cm (5 ft 11 in)

So while the same height is above average for men, it falls below P75 among younger men and just above P75 among all adult men. And for women, it continues to be unusually tall:

Female age 20–29 P95: 174.6 cm (5 ft 9 in)

Female age 20+ P95: 172.5 cm (5 ft 8 in)

These differences don’t tell us whether aging, generational changes or something else caused them.

What tall means in your reference group

Now, just because someone is 5 feet 11 inches doesn’t mean they’re tall. There’s no official statistical threshold for “tall”, so whether or not someone is considered tall depends on their reference group. In general, people tend to label themselves and others as “tall” when they’re taller than the average person in their own peer group.

But there’s also a more informal sense of what “tall” means. When people talk about someone being “tall”, they usually mean someone who’s close to six feet tall. So even though 5 feet 11 inches is only one inch shorter than six feet, it’s often considered “tall”.