Tall tale: world-beating Dutch are getting shorter

THE HAGUE (HRNW) – The world s tallest country is shrinking.

The generation of Dutch people born in 2001 is shorter than the one born in 1980, a study by the country s statistics office said on Friday.

Lofty Dutch 19-year-old men currently measure an average of 182.9 cm (six feet) tall, and women are on average 169.3 cm (five feet seven inches) tall.

Factors including immigration and diet are likely to be responsible for the change in height, which reverses a century and a half of rapid growth, the study said.

“In the course of the last century we have become taller and taller, but since 1980 the growth has stopped,” it said.