Average height in the US rises from about 92.4cm (3’0.4”) at age 2 to roughly 175.9cm (5’9.3”) for boys and 163.5cm (5’4.4”) for girls by age 19, using the CDC/NHANES reference. The CDC’s separate adult (20+) aggregate is 175.1cm for men and 161.9cm for women.
Average height by age and sex (CDC/NHANES)
This is the full CDC/NHANES median (50th percentile) height-for-age table, ages 2 to 20, plus the adult aggregate used for every age above 20.
| Age | Boys — median height | Girls — median height |
|---|---|---|
| 2 | 92.4cm (3’0.4”) | 89.5cm (2’11.2”) |
| 3 | 99.1cm (3’3.0”) | 97.8cm (3’2.5”) |
| 4 | 106.5cm (3’5.9”) | 106.0cm (3’5.7”) |
| 5 | 113.0cm (3’8.5”) | 111.9cm (3’8.1”) |
| 6 | 120.1cm (3’11.3”) | 118.6cm (3’10.7”) |
| 7 | 126.7cm (4’1.9”) | 123.7cm (4’0.7”) |
| 8 | 131.4cm (4’3.7”) | 131.4cm (4’3.7”) |
| 9 | 135.6cm (4’5.4”) | 137.5cm (4’6.1”) |
| 10 | 143.0cm (4’8.3”) | 143.1cm (4’8.3”) |
| 11 | 149.0cm (4’10.7”) | 151.2cm (4’11.5”) |
| 12 | 155.6cm (5’1.3”) | 156.2cm (5’1.5”) |
| 13 | 163.9cm (5’4.5”) | 158.5cm (5’2.4”) |
| 14 | 169.0cm (5’6.5”) | 161.1cm (5’3.4”) |
| 15 | 173.8cm (5’8.4”) | 161.7cm (5’3.7”) |
| 16 | 174.5cm (5’8.7”) | 161.7cm (5’3.7”) |
| 17 | 174.8cm (5’8.8”) | 162.9cm (5’4.1”) |
| 18 | 175.3cm (5’9.0”) | 162.4cm (5’3.9”) |
| 19 | 175.9cm (5’9.3”) | 163.5cm (5’4.4”) |
| Adult (20+) | 175.1cm (5’8.9”) | 161.9cm (5’3.7”) |
The girls-then-boys crossover, visible in the table
Look closely at ages 8 to 13 in the table above, and a pattern emerges. At age 8, boys and girls are identical (131.4cm each). By age 9, girls (137.5cm) have pulled ahead of boys (135.6cm), and they stay ahead through about age 11.
That’s because girls typically enter puberty, and its growth spurt, one to two years before boys. From age 13 onward the order flips: boys (163.9cm) overtake girls (158.5cm) and pull further ahead every year after, as their own growth spurt starts later but runs longer.
By age 19, the table shows boys at 175.9cm against girls at 163.5cm — a gap of 12.4cm that’s close to the adult gap seen in country-level datasets. This crossover is a well-known, real feature of human growth, not an artefact of this particular table.
Percentile
50th
At 175.1 cm and age 20, you are taller than approximately 50% of the CDC reference population for your sex.
z-score 0.00
Two different US adult averages, and why that’s fine
This page’s adult row — 175.1cm for men, 161.9cm for women — is the CDC/NHANES 2011-2014 all-ages-20-and-over aggregate. It is one single figure covering every US adult, not broken out by decade.
Elsewhere on this site, the country average dataset gives a different US adult figure: 176.9cm for men and 163.3cm for women. That figure comes from NCD-RisC’s 2019 cohort at age 19, a different dataset built with a different methodology and sampling frame.
Neither figure is “more correct” than the other — they’re simply two different valid measurements of the same broad question, from two different sources. This page uses the CDC/NHANES figure throughout, since it’s the same reference the age-by-age rows above are built from, keeping the whole table internally consistent.
Compared with the average male in United States
0 cm
taller than the average of 176.9 cm.
United States ranks #30 of 69 countries in this dataset (39 have a lower average).
Top 10 tallest-average countries (male)
| Rank | Country | Average height |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Netherlands | 183.8 cm |
| 2 | Montenegro | 183.3 cm |
| 3 | Estonia | 182.8 cm |
| 4 | Bosnia and Herzegovina | 182.5 cm |
| 5 | Iceland | 182.1 cm |
| 6 | Denmark | 181.9 cm |
| 7 | Latvia | 181.2 cm |
| 8 | Czechia | 181.2 cm |
| 9 | Slovakia | 181 cm |
| 10 | Ukraine | 181 cm |
Boys and girls at the same age, side by side
A few ages are worth calling out directly from the table. At age 8, boys and girls are identical at 131.4cm — the only age in the table where the two sexes match exactly. At age 10, they’re nearly identical too, just 0.1cm apart.
Contrast that with age 15, where boys (173.8cm) lead girls (161.7cm) by 12.1cm, close to the full adult gap already. Most of the male-female height gap that persists into adulthood has already opened up by the mid-teens, well before either sex finishes growing entirely.
Growth speed changes a lot with age
The size of the jump between rows tells its own story. From age 2 to 8, height rises steadily, by roughly 5-7cm per year for both sexes. Between about 9 and 15, the rise becomes far less even, concentrated into each sex’s own puberty-driven growth spurt.
By age 18 or 19, growth has mostly levelled off — the change from 18 to 19 is under a centimetre for boys and about 1.1cm for girls, much smaller than the earlier jumps. That’s why the adult row essentially matches the age-19 or age-20 figures, rather than continuing to climb.
Measuring height accurately against this table
Small measurement errors can shift where a height lands against these figures. Stand fully upright without shoes, heels and shoulder blades against a flat wall, and use a rigid flat object to mark the top of the head against a wall-mounted ruler or tape.
Height also varies slightly through the day, usually reading a touch taller in the morning than the evening, because the spine compresses gradually while upright. For the most consistent comparison against the table above, measure at roughly the same time of day each time.
Checking an exact height and age
Rather than reading the nearest row off the table, the percentile calculator above works out exactly where a specific height and age combination sits, using the same CDC/NHANES data. It also supports the WHO international reference as an alternative for ages 5-19, useful if you want to compare against a broader international benchmark instead of the US-specific one.
Percentile and average aren’t the same thing. The table above gives the median (50th percentile) at each age; the calculator can show any height’s percentile, whether that’s above, below, or exactly at the median for its age and sex.
Using this table sensibly
These are median figures for a large reference sample, not a prediction for any individual child or adult. Height at any age varies for genuine, healthy reasons — family height, the timing of puberty, and ordinary individual variation all play a part.
If you’re checking a specific child’s growth for a health reason, a paediatrician or GP can compare it against clinical growth charts and the child’s own growth history, which this general table cannot do. This page is a reference resource, not a diagnostic tool.
It’s also worth noting what this table doesn’t cover. Ages under 2 use a different measurement approach (recumbent length rather than standing height) and a different reference entirely, so nothing here applies to infants or toddlers under 2 years old.
Method and sources
Ages 2-19: CDC/NCHS Anthropometric Reference Data for Children and Adults, United States, 2011-2014 (Fryar, Gu, Ogden and Flegal, 2016), Table 7, single year of age, median (50th percentile) values.
Adult (20+): the same report’s Tables 9 and 11, a single all-ages-20-and-over aggregate rather than an age-banded figure — this is why the “adult” row doesn’t simply continue the age-19 trend. This site’s separate NCD-RisC-based country dataset gives a different US adult figure (176.9cm / 163.3cm); both are cited above with their own sourcing. Last reviewed 2026-09-19.
Try the height percentile calculator to check any US height and age combination against the CDC or WHO reference, or try the average height by country tool to compare the US adult average with any other country in this site’s dataset.