About 1.3% of US adult women are 5’10” (177.8cm) or taller, based on the CDC/NHANES adult female reference. That’s because 5’10” sits at roughly the 98.7th percentile for height — so 98.7% of women are that height or shorter, leaving 1.3% taller, or roughly 1 in every 80.
How 5’10” compares
| Measure | Height | Difference from 5’10” |
|---|---|---|
| 5’10” (this article) | 177.8cm | — |
| US adult female average | 163.3cm | -14.5cm shorter |
| UK adult female average | 163.94cm | -13.9cm shorter |
| US percentile (CDC/NHANES) | 98.7th | 1.3% of US women are this tall or taller |
| Name | Height |
|---|---|
| 5'10" woman | 177.8 cm |
| US average woman | 163.3 cm |
| UK average woman | 163.9 cm |
Try the calculator below with your own age and reference population, pre-filled to this exact case.
This reference covers ages 2-20; using the nearest available data point for age 30.
Percentile
99th
At 177.8 cm and age 30, you are taller than approximately 99% of the CDC reference population for your sex.
z-score 2.23
How rare is 5’10” for a woman?
A 98.7th-percentile height is genuinely uncommon. Out of every 100 adult women in the CDC/NHANES sample, roughly 99 are 5’10” or shorter, and only about 1 is taller. Put another way, about 1 in 80 women reaches this height.
That makes 5’10” a clear outlier on the tall end of the female height distribution, not just “above average.” Most adult women cluster much closer to the 163-165cm range that both the US and UK averages fall into.
The maths in plain English
Height percentile calculations use the LMS method: a person’s height is converted into a z-score against a reference population’s median (M) and spread (S) for their age and sex, then that z-score is converted into a percentile using the standard normal distribution.
For 5’10” (177.8cm) against the CDC/NHANES US adult female reference (M = 161.9cm, S = 0.043944), the z-score works out to about 2.235. A z-score of 2.235 converts to roughly the 98.7th percentile — meaning 98.7% of the reference population is that height or shorter.
To get “percentage 5’10” or taller,” subtract the percentile from 100: 100 − 98.7 = 1.3%. That’s the whole calculation — no separate formula is needed for “or taller” figures, since percentile and its complement always sum to 100%.
Why the answer depends on which country you pick
Height varies by population for a mix of genetic and environmental reasons, including nutrition and public health across childhood. The 1.3% figure is anchored specifically to the CDC/NHANES US adult female sample.
Against the US average (163.3cm), 5’10” is about 14.5cm taller. Against the UK average (163.94cm), the gap is a very similar 13.9cm, since the US and UK female averages sit close together. Countries with a higher average female height than the US or UK would see a somewhat larger share of women reaching 5’10”; countries with a lower average would see a smaller share still.
This is also why the percentile calculator lets you check any height against the CDC reference directly, rather than relying on a single rule of thumb that ignores which population you actually mean.
Percentile is not the same as average
It’s easy to conflate “percentile” with “average,” but they answer different questions. Average height is one number — the midpoint of a population, 163.3cm for US adult women. Percentile describes where any specific height falls across the full spread of that population, from the shortest to the tallest.
5’10” isn’t just “above average” — it’s a specific distance above it. Because height is roughly normally distributed, that roughly 14.5cm gap from the average translates into a large percentile jump, from the 50th percentile at the average up to the 98.7th at 5’10”. Height percentiles compress in the middle of the distribution and stretch out towards the tails, so a height this far from the median lands in genuinely rare territory.
What shapes adult height
Adult height comes from a mix of genetic inheritance and childhood environment. Genetics sets a range of potential heights; factors such as nutrition, general health and healthcare access during childhood and adolescence influence where within that range someone ends up.
None of this makes any individual height, including 5’10”, a reflection of anything other than a mix of inherited and environmental factors that are largely outside a person’s control. A rare percentile is a statistical description, not a judgement about anyone who has it.
This is also part of why average height differs between countries and has shifted over generations within the same country, as living standards, diet and healthcare have changed. A 98.7th-percentile height today describes today’s reference population specifically, not a fixed, permanent boundary.
A ranking, not a judgement
None of the figures on this page say anything about health, ability or anything else beyond where a specific height sits in a measured population. Percentile is a purely descriptive statistic, and this site treats every height, in every percentile band, as equally unremarkable — because statistically, that’s exactly what they are.
Being in a rare percentile band simply means fewer people share that exact height. It doesn’t make a height more or less “normal” in any meaningful sense; normal, ordinary variation in a population naturally includes some rarer values at both ends.
Measuring your height accurately
If you’re checking your own height against these figures, small measurement errors can shift the result. Stand fully upright without shoes, heels and shoulder blades against a flat wall, and use a rigid flat object, not a tape measure alone, to mark the top of your head against a wall-mounted ruler or tape.
Height also varies slightly across the day, typically reading a touch taller in the morning than in the evening, because the spine compresses gradually while standing or sitting. For the most consistent comparison against reference data like the figures above, measure at roughly the same time of day each time.
How this figure was calculated
The percentile for 5’10” (177.8cm) was calculated using the LMS method against the CDC/NHANES adult (20+) reference point for women: M (median) = 161.9cm, S (coefficient of variation) = 0.043944, L = 1. The z-score works out to z ≈ 2.235, which converts to the 98.7th percentile via the standard normal distribution, leaving 1.3% taller.
The CDC/NHANES adult figure is a single aggregate for everyone aged 20 and over, not broken out by decade — see the percentile tool’s own “Method and sources” section for the full data-provenance notes.
Country averages (US and UK) come from this site’s country dataset, itself compiled from NCD-RisC’s 2019 cohort figures (age 19). See the country average tool for the full list and its own sourcing notes.
Because the CDC/NHANES adult S value here is estimated from published percentile columns rather than an official LMS fit, treat the 98.7th-percentile figure as a close approximation rather than an exact match to any single authoritative table. The broad picture — 5’10” as a genuinely tall height for a woman — holds regardless of the small margin of approximation involved.
Try the full percentile calculator to check any height against the CDC or WHO reference, or open the comparison board to see 5’10” stood next to another height.