Which Nations Boast the World's Tallest Men?

Your height can affect your life in a number of surprising ways. Extra height helps your career; a 2013 study published in Sage Journals revealed that taller people were seen as being more dominant, healthy and intelligent, and subsequently more suited to leadership. Perhaps not unrelatedly, taller people tend to earn more money, according to a 2004 study published in Journal of Applied Psychology.

Being taller generates success outside of the workplace too. Studies have shown that height is seen as a desirable trait for a partner, particularly in men. Tall people in the U.S. even evaluated their lives more positively than their shorter counterparts in a 2009 poll, reporting more enjoyment and happiness, and less sadness and physical pain.

However, short people are playing the long game. Life expectancy for smaller people tends to be longer, as they have less mass and so have less body cells which are at risk of developing cancer.

We know that we have little control over our height, yet a new study published last week in the journal Genetics shows that it's even more pre-destined than we may have thought. A team of scientists from Michigan State University have built an algorithm which can predict somebody's height just from analysing their complete genome. The algorithm's predictions are accurate enough to have only a one-inch margin of error.

Average height varies hugely around the world. People tend to be shorter in Asian and South American countries, while Europeans tend to be taller. However, nutrition and health factors mean that some people in low income countries aren't growing as tall as their genetic makeup allows—this may explain the height difference between North and South Koreans, who share very similar genetics, but have very different environments.

Using data from AverageHeight.co, we've listed the average height for men for 101 countries across the world. Indonesian men are the shortest at 5 feet 2.25 inches on average—that's not far from being a foot shorter than the two countries which take joint top place with their 6 feet 0.5 inches average height. When it comes to the world's tallest countries, this is the long and short of it.