The surveys were part of a recent survey by Spanish sociologists and historians on height and socioeconomic status. The researchers want to find out ‘what happened during that period’ and find out ‘whether the trend is continuing or whether it is a temporary and temporary stagnation’ ‘Something is happening in the diet that makes the body widen and it does not grow at the pace and the intensity it has done over the decades’.
“It was not the desired result,” admits Antonio David Cámara, a sociologist at the University of Jaén and one of the researchers, who focuses on how socioeconomic differences affect the height of the population, and how this affects the population. has changed in recent decades. When we analyzed the data from his research, “We stumbled upon this, and we knew it would attract attention because we’ve had four decades of secular growth in height. But it didn’t surprise me that much,’ he confesses. Life expectancy in Spain has risen at a staggering rate over the last four decades. This is one of the data that emerges from his study: that from the 1950s onward, the average height of Spaniards skyrocketed, and began to grow very intensely. “Spain may follow a little later, and it will take us a long time, but after that we go very quickly.”
He warns: ‘We cannot expect the average height to continue to grow at the same rate as in those four decades. Because then, in the next decade, men would be taller than six feet. Since the study uses averages, an average height of 1.80 meters ‘would mean at least 25% taller than 2 metres, ie one in four men’. “Biologically speaking,” he says, “this doesn’t seem very plausible.”
Also in rest of Europe
This stagnation in length is not exclusive to Spain, by the way. ‘The same trend of flattening of the mean height is observed in other European countries. Either the trend in intergenerational growth is slowing or it is stagnating. Why? We don’t know,” the researcher admits. They do not know, but with regard to Spain, they point to some hypotheses.
For Cámara, it is most likely that ‘Spain has achieved normalization in the main factors of living conditions, access to a healthy diet, the prevalence of communicable diseases, access to a large number of goods and services guaranteed by social benefits. normalized. And if you normalize the environmental conditions, you will reach the maximum biological potential.
Intense growth over decades
José Miguel Martínez Carrión, professor of economic history at the University of Murcia and one of the first to study prestige in Spain, also admits to being “surprised” by the results of his research. ‘Because we have been analyzing the evolution of the height of Spaniards for a long time, and we are the men who have grown the most in the second half of the 20th century. Especially since the 1980s, Spanish men have grown strongly as a result of the far-reaching economic and social changes’.
Relationship with standard of living
“Length reflects a society’s standard of living,” explains the historian. ‘But also inequality, income levels and access to sources of nutrients. If the environment in childhood and adolescence is favorable, this is reflected in body size.
Youngest group
For the study, respondents between the ages of 23 and 49 were examined, ie the age at which their height remains stable. The surprise is greatest in the youngest group. ‘The last five-year period we analyzed was 1990-1994. It concerns women and men between 23 and 27 years old. If we look at the height of men and women in that range, we see a stagnation.”
More research is needed
However, Martínez Carrión continues to warn that the data is “strange but scarce” and that “much more research is needed” to determine the cause of this stagnation. ‘We want to investigate what happened during this period. With the data we have, we can only make hypotheses’.
Diet changes in children and adolescents
‘I looked at milk consumption per capita, which has fallen in Spain since the 1990s. This consumption starts to grow intensively in the 1950s, but in the 1990s it stops and begins to decline intensively. And milk is a basic protein for the growth of children. Perhaps the quality of the infant food is not so good’, warns Martínez Carrión.
He suggests that the quality of the nutrients could be an element that could explain this stagnation in growth in height, but he does not dare to go further for the time being. And he points to something else. We are getting fatter. Could the rise in obesity also have something to do with it?
The historian does not rule it out. “Something happens in the diet that makes the body widen and it doesn’t grow at the rate and intensity with which it has grown in recent decades.” He recalls that ‘20% of the Spanish population cannot make ends meet’, that ‘inequality and the vulnerability of a part of the population have increased’. And he pointed out that ‘we may be reorienting our diet towards the consumption of cheap fast food products, for example…. We are seeing more and more obese children. Something is going wrong in the diet of children and adolescents’.
Whether changes in diet are at the root of the stagnation of growth is not clear. But ‘we all know how important the first three years of life are for the development of children. And we see that adolescence is also a critical and very sensitive stage,” Carrión warns. In this case, there is ‘malnutrition from excess, not from lack: from excess calories and consumption of low-quality nutrients’.
The researcher also points out that these young people, born in the 1990s, were affected by the 2008 crisis at the end of their adolescence. Could this period of recession also have influenced their development? ‘We do not know. What is clear is that something has happened.”
Temporary or permanent stagnation?
If the stagnation is temporary, ‘it would have an impact, because if we start growing again, then something has happened in those generations. But if it stays that way, that’s the limit we’ve reached,” they say. The cause would then be more in the direction of that ‘maximum biological potential’ that Cámara pointed out. Whatever the reason, the data is there. And while they find the explanation, the researchers hope it will at least serve as a wake-up call for the institutions.