What was the average height for the man in 1920 Australia
Executive summary
No single, authoritative figure for "the average height for the man in 1920 Australia" appears in the supplied reporting; large-scale reconstructions (Our World in Data) and modern Australian surveys show long-term increases in male stature but the provided sources do not include a direct measured mean for Australian adult men in the calendar year 1920 [1] [2] [3]. Using those sources as context, a cautious, evidence‑qualified estimate places the typical adult Australian man around the mid‑160s to low‑170s centimetres in that era, but that estimate must be treated as provisional because the supplied material lacks a direct 1920 measurement [2] [3].
1. What the question really asks and why it’s tricky
Asking “the average height for the man in 1920 Australia” can mean different things — the mean height of men who were adults in the year 1920, or the mean adult height of men born around 1920 — and historical height data are fragmentary because most historical sources come from specialised records (soldiers, prisoners, conscripts) rather than representative population surveys, so simple, precise answers for a single year are rarely available without targeted archival studies [2].
2. What broad datasets and reconstructions show about long‑term change
Global reconstructions compiled by researchers and presented by Our World in Data show that average adult heights have risen substantially over the last century, with global mean male height increasing by roughly ten centimetres for many regions between cohorts born around 1900 and modern cohorts, and those reconstructions rely on heterogeneous historical sources and modelling rather than continuous national censuses [1] [2].
3. What modern Australian surveys tell about direction and scale
Contemporary Australian statistics provide a modern anchor: the Australian Bureau of Statistics reported an average height for Australian men (18+) of 175.6 cm in 2011–12, confirming that Australians in the early 21st century are taller on average than their ancestors, but that single modern figure cannot by itself tell the exact average a century earlier without a proper historical series [3].
4. Evidence specific to Australia, regional variation and Indigenous populations
Australian historical studies complicate any single‑number claim: academic work has debated late‑nineteenth and early‑twentieth century trends — some analyses suggest declines or stagnation in certain birth cohorts, and separate studies on Aboriginal populations show differing regional trends (one 1971 study reported increases of ~5 cm compared to the 1930s in one region while another paper found little change across 1860–1980 in a different region), meaning national averages would mask large subpopulation differences [4] [5] [6].
5. Best‑available, evidence‑qualified estimate and its uncertainty
Bringing the above together, and strictly within the constraints of the supplied reporting, there is no direct, cited national mean for Australian men in 1920; using the documented century‑scale gain of about 10 cm (Our World in Data) and the modern ABS mean of 175.6 cm (2011–12) suggests a crude back‑of‑the‑envelope central estimate in the mid‑160s cm to low‑170s cm range for adult Australian men a century earlier, but that range must be treated as an approximation because national historical measurements, sampling frames, and regional and ethnic heterogeneity are not provided in the sources supplied [2] [3] [1] [4].
6. Conclusion and research gaps
A precise, defensible figure for “the average height for the man in 1920 Australia” cannot be produced from the materials supplied; the best path to a firmer answer is to consult primary historical datasets and the country‑level series in the Our World in Data/Baten & Blum reconstructions or archival ABS records for the 1910s–1920s, while accounting for the biases of soldier/prisoner samples and the diversity of Australia’s subpopulations [1] [2] [4].