Dynamics of Russian men height in the 20th century and its factors based on the results of big data analysis: methodological aspects

Abstract

Introduction. The article presents the results of the analysis of the dynamics of Russian men height aged 17 years and older in 1902-2000. This topic has already been the subject of a number of researchers. The novelty of the article is that the analysis is based on big data.

Materials and methods. The study used height data of 4,430,180 Russian men aged 17 to 100 years, 117 nationalities, 91% Russian, examined mainly during recruitment into the army under a program that included measuring total body dimensions. The database includes 1,465,272 individual and 2,964,908 total data on height - this is the largest collection of data on the body length of Russian men of the 20th century.

Results. The height of Russian men born in 1902-2000 increased by 11.1 cm – from 166.4 to 177.5 cm. Such significant changes in height over a century, comparable in scale with global trends of the secular trend, are explained mainly by the influence of socio-economic and demographic factors. Approximately the same results were obtained when analyzing changes in the height of women, urban and rural populations. Conclusion. An upward secular trend was observed in the dynamics of the body length of Russians in the 20th century. Over 100 years, men grew from 166.4 to 177.5 cm – by 11.1 cm. Only cohorts born in 1916-1930 showed an insignificant (by 1.2 cm) decrease in average height. The increase in body length in the urban and rural population, as well as in men and women and representatives of different ethnic groups in most cases occurred synchronously and in approximately the same amounts. This means that the Soviet government ensured the improvement of living conditions in all population groups equally. © 2025. This work is licensed under a CC BY 4.0 license

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