Secular Trend in Height of Japanese in The Past Century-How to Read Different Sources of Data |Biomedgrid

In Northeast Asia, Japan suffered severely in WWII but recovered swiftly to the pre-war level in 1955 and kept growing steadily to the level of the Western nations toward the end of the century. South Korea did not suffer much in WWII but the whole nation was devastated by the Korean War (1950-53). Children in Japan started to grow taller at a fast rate since the early 1950s but plateaued in all ages in the end of the 1980s, despite the continued increases in consumption of animal products. Children in South Korea caught up to Japanese peers in height in the mid-1990s and overtook Japanese peers by 3.0 cm in the mid-2000s and then plateaued in the midst of economic prosperity. Based on scant observations of young men's height between the two nations in the pre-war periods, the 3.0 cm differences in height of young men are often attributed to differences in “gene potential in reserve” (Kopczynski) between the two nations.