I don't subscribe so I only read the first two paragraphs fluffed out to say city kids in US are slightly shorter than country kids.
I dare say whomever will rediscover the role sodium phosphate plays in growing bodies when consumption is greatly exceeded -- it is used as a food additive, including some soft drinks. I'm sure many soft drink brands may still use the additive, but at a much reduced rate compared to 70s, 80s and 19990s.
No, it does not form part of commercial fertilizers. Plants though could probably utilize it though. In small amounts it's beneficial to the body, just not in excess.
In excessive amounts it was (1980s) shown to effect skeletal growth detrimentally. The funny thing presently when I search the web is ... I find nothing except a maybe [1] which is sort of sad ... I fear the food industry fingerprints are on poor searches - though I do have somewhere a couple of books from the late 80s that had expounded excess sodium phosphate's role in skeletal formation.
When I grew up, in my locale, there was an epidemic of shorter than would be expected children, some clues were there, slowly it seemed most were very thirsty and actively consuming one brand of softdrink ... as much as I liked it, more than a couple of cups caused my gut to grumble and boil for a bit. During the 90s the formulation changed or was fixed, I know it certainly changed as I no longer suffered as I once did if I happened to consume more than a couple cups in a hour. At the time I had no idea of the cause and wasn't until reading conclusions in a pretty grounded book.
Now someone has posted what the article was based on, with comments saying it was done with little controls for genetics and other factors, my comment may have been premature being the first comment in discussion.
Sodium Phosphate though is added to many foods [1] [2] -- it's something to keep in mind. It's possible due to a learning curve, that the rate applied to soft drinks has been reduced in the US as well, but I'm not privy to that sort of information.
Except pollution is drastically improving with cleaner engines and the gradual decline of coal power. And fully urban people walk everywhere, the "lack of exercise" in this day and age is more a mark of rural and suburban people who can't get anywhere without a truck.
This has been “country wisdom” for some time in my part of the U.S. Lots of jokes about “farm boys” who are a head taller than their parents, and wondering what they’ve been being fed.
But for most of your time, it primarily being about farm boys been false. Through the end of the 20th century being in the country stunted your growth compared to the city.
What is true is that height increases each (modern first-world) generation
Poster didn't give a start date, how can you assume it's been bullshit for most of it's existence? For all you know poster is 40 years old and is going off of what has been talked about over than last 30.
Has the internet warped your mind to the point that you seriously think people have folders of links on standby to paste to support a point (an obvious point as well)?
Find me a big city in the west where white people have even stayed the same in their percentage of population since 1990. I can't find any in the top 100 or so cities in the US on a 30 second search - everything is a decrease.
Your first sentence and your second sentence are profoundly unaware, and I find that kind of funny.
You made a claim, then got pissy about being asked to cite it, and are now asking me to cite something instead, as if you hadn't just flat out refused to do exactly what you're asking me now to do. The balls on you!
The article weirdly (or unsurprisingly) does not mention diet, but the underlying study does.
Immigrants might also be throwing off the average. They tend to grow taller in North America (not just second generation), again, unsurprisingly because of diet.
I grew up in India and spent 7 years at UT southwestern where apparently half the students are Indian American and noticed the same, Indian Americans are much taller on average (by several inches), than Indians. I assumed it was diet (red meat was my suspicion) but I’ve come to meet many traditional Indian American families who follow very strict traditional vegetarian diets, so I’m starting to suspect it’s not just gross changes in diet but also changes in the nutritional value of the same food items.
Sanitation surely plays a part as well. If tap water is filthy (as it is in virtually all of India) and you're constantly getting sick as a result, this will definitely impact growth.
It's not too hard or expensive to avoid drinking it straight up, but any restaurant you visit will wash food and surfaces with it, every bathroom you visit you'll wash your own hands with it, etc etc.
You’d be surprised how hard that can be. Unless you buy imported bottled water, you’re likely getting quite unregulated well water even if you buy 25 liter cans of the best brand here. Water treatment here is mere clorination and likely 90% of the population lives in places with no water supply (you just dig your own borewell).
How does food fortification compare between the two countries? Because I know in the US they fortify the shit out of almost every form of cheap grain foods with atleast iron and commonly with other vitamins and minerals.
It does mention nutrition, but doesn’t consider pollution. Banning specific chemicals and possibly the organic food movement seems likely to have a real impact on rural populations in aggregate.
However, I doubt you can pick any one specific cause and say it’s definitive.
It does not appear they controlled for ethnicity, race or any other measure of genetic stock. Doing so is important in my view. For example, the oft-cited average US male height 5'9 or 5'10", but for white American men it's more like 5'11"
Why are global population differences not sufficient? Is there an a priori reason to expect a different distribution of genetic factors in cities versus rural areas that feed city migrations?
Absolutely. Pick any city of your choice. New York, Los Angeles, London, Joburg, Bangalore, Hong Kong, Lima... Are the ethnic demographics of the city not substantially different from those of its rural surroundings?
I thought that due to redlining and white flight, the answer is that yes, there are more white people as a percentage of the total in rural areas compared to cities.
Absolutely, without any doubt in my mind. DC [1] and Baltimore when compared to the rural areas are significantly different ethnic demographics. This might be one of the most dramatic, but I have seen it in nearly every city I have ever visited. LA, Seattle, DC, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Miami, SF, Portland, London, Lisbon, Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Munich, Vienna, Geneva and dozens others that I have traveled to have significantly different demographics in the city than their rural areas surrounding them.
The only places I feel have been homogeneous with their rural areas surrounding them, have been some of nordic places like Copenhagen, Oslo, Stockholm and Tallinn.
> Absolutely. Pick any city of your choice. New York, Los Angeles, London, Joburg, Bangalore, Hong Kong, Lima... Are the ethnic demographics of the city not substantially different from those of its rural surroundings?
Yes, but are they all ethnically skewed in the same way? If the concern is genetic factors, it doesn't really matter if cities have different ethnic demographics than rural areas in all two hundred countries as long as the rural/urban racial skew is different in the different countries.
For example, in the US rural areas may tend to be whiter than urban areas, but in countries that aren't predominantly caucasian, the opposite may be true.
Anecdotally it really seems like this should be true.
Cities in mostly ethnically homogeneous states tend to still have things of value that might draw people of diverse ethnic backgrounds. I'm in Nashville Tennessee and there are far more people of Asian or middle Eastern descent here in the city than there are in the surrounding rural areas, due to the universities and the job opportunities which draw people from out of state.
Of course. Cities have been transportation hubs for centuries, and have been the arrival destinations for inter-country travel for centuries. Cities are a natural hub for diversity.
But if by “a priori” you mean something innate in humans or mathematical, I think you’ll be hard pressed to find that. Or what that really means in this context.
> But if by “a priori” you mean something innate in humans or mathematical, I think you’ll be hard pressed to find that. Or what that really even means.
A priori = Beforehand, or before analysis performed. Standard phrasing in research, defines reasonable hypotheses to test.
Of course. But everyone has different knowledge of human history so it’s hard to say what counts as a priori for you versus me.
For example, most americans have a-priori knowledge that rural americans are demographically whiter than urban americans, and could hypothesize global trends.
If that counts as an a priori reason - I’ll take it. In summary: “A priori” is ambiguous here / not a very useful modifier afaict.
They don't control for ethnicity, but they study for 200 countries, not just the US. But more importantly -- this has taken place from 1990 to 2020. Have there been big demographic shifts between rural/urban in that time?
Yes, rural to urban migration is a huge factor across vast swathes of the world, and not just in poor countries. Many wealthy countries like Japan and South Korea are seeing the rural countryside rapidly depopulate, as the young decamp to cities in search of education and jobs.
> The total 2020 enumerated population of all [331] cities over 100,000 is 96,598,047, representing 29.14% of the United States population (excluding territories)
The 50% stat is talking about metro areas, not city boundaries. That is, what people on the ground would use to describe in a city vs. the legal borders.
So, for instance, Greater Los Angeles has more than 18 million people by itself, where your source lists it as under 4 million.
there is more to diversity than the colour of our skin, but yes I would expect the more we're all crowding in on this mudball with lots of free travel between boarders or bluring of borders the more we're going to all end up looking much like each other.
Space may change that. we may end up with some very strange looking sections of humanity once we get into space.
US: US Census Bureau
UK: Office for National Statistics
South Africa: Statistics South Africa
India: Census of India
China: National Bureau of Statistics of China
Peru: National Institute of Statistics and Informatics
Yeah i literally just said "give me the specific stats about ethnic makeup of urban/rural and how theyve changed in a few different countries from 1990-2020. what is your source for this data. put the data in a text-based table format"
I've used chatgpt in a research context numerous times and I always ask for sources and double check the sources. When asked for numbers most of the time it makes them up, when citing sources it also makes up titles of papers and DOIs. It's highly likely the information you got is entirely false
> Have there been big demographic shifts between rural/urban in that time?
The best one that I can think of is the fact that rural children probably spend more time outside engaging in physical activity. Even in the US, I know of high schools where a substantial number of the students are working full-time jobs outside during the summer, in addition to doing outdoors sports and other activities during the school year.
Perhaps tall people are more likely to find work in rural areas and short people's skills are more likely to align with urban environments.
I still wonder if there is something else going on. But feel like instead of a survey of 200 countries it would be more interesting to just focus on one country with a more homogenous genetic population and measure lots of different possibel variables
> I still wonder if there is something else going on. But feel like instead of a survey of 200 countries it would be more interesting to just focus on one country with a more homogenous genetic population and measure lots of different possibel variables
I think the point is that looking at 200 countries makes the possibility of confounding factors much lower
Anthropologists define culture as a set of learned behaviors, beliefs, values, customs, and artifacts that are shared by members of a particular group or society.
Without attempting to control for it you're not going to know, right? As an example of one isolated mechanism that might make a difference, fish is probably one of the only foods nutritionists almost all agree is healthy, is known to prevent stunting of growth in children, and fish consumption is higher in some cultures than others.
I have no idea what you're trying to say and don't think genetics as a factor in cultural diversity has anything to do with the point in question. If eating fish makes you taller, and there's a country called Hypotheticalia with a strong north/south cultural divide where North Hypotheticals eat more fish than South Hypotheticals despite being genetically identical, then controlling for culture may change your results.
If whatever you wanted to say agrees with this, I agree with it; if it disagrees, I disagree with it.
I don't see cultures mentioned anywhere in the article or the comment you replied to.
If mean that there are no differences in the genes that determine height across populations, that is incorrect. For example, the average male height in Pygmy populations is 5 feet, or about 7 inches lower than Cameroon's Bantu populations who live alongside Pygmies. We know there are genetic differences between Pygmy and Bantu populations that are specifically associated with height, and that average Pygmy height increases along with the percentage of Bantu ancestry (https://journals.plos.org/plosgenetics/article/info%3Adoi%2F...). Similarly, differences in height across European populations have been demonstrated to be partly due to differences in the hundreds of genes associated with height (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3480734/).
Fair, Pygmy genetics are minorly distinct. No other group is, and unless you're suggesting the urban Pygmy population exploded to account for these changes, it's irrelevant.
> Pygmy genetics are minorly distinct. No other group is
One group in all of humanity happened to have measurable differences in genes affecting height?
How does that explain the many other distinct "Pygmy" groups entirely separate from those in West Africa, such as those in the Philippines, who have genetic differences in growth hormones that cause them to be shorter (https://doi.org/10.1515/JPEM.2002.15.3.269)? "Pygmy" simply refers to one of these many groups, they are genetically and geographically distinct.
Pygmy groups show how absurd the claim that there are no differences in height is, but the same kind of variation has been shown within European groups on a smaller scale (consistent with the greater genetic diversity in Africa than Europe). We know that similar differences in genes that influence height exist, to a less extreme degree, across all populations. For example, males in both the Tutsi and Dinka ethnic groups average nearly 6' tall, despite living in areas where malnutrition is/was widespread and alongside other groups that are much shorter on average.
I'm genuinely curious where you got the idea that there are no genetic differences affecting height between ethnic groups/countries. Researchers have identified genetic markers responsible for the majority of variation in human height among Europeans (https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/588020v1), and shown that those markers vary significantly across European groups just as they do in Africa (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3480734/).
Every single variation in "genetic trends" amongst cultures is negligible and otherwise entirely attributable to environmental factors.
The source of the ideas you're asserting as fact are very dark and extremely thoroughly debunked at this point. Honestly it's kind of shameful to present these 1920s ideas as modern.
Individually yes, genetics contribute to height, but the full range of height genetics exist in every culture.
>Individually yes, genetics contribute to height, but the full range of height genetics exist in every culture.
"The full range of incomes exist in every country, therefore differences in average incomes across countries must be negligible."
You've linked a long list of articles talking about race in America and Brazil, none of which I can see claim that there are no differences in genetic height by ethnic group. One is a book from 1944 that rightly rejects racially discriminatory policies and argues "that experience rather than inborn traits determines standards of social conduct." What part of that supports the idea that the 6' Tutsis or Croats are genetically predisposed to the same height as the Taron who average 4'3?
The MedlinePlus article you linked explicitly says "in some cases, ethnicity plays a role in adult height."
"Race" categories as described by all of your links that I saw ("black"/"white") are crude aggregations of hundreds of ethnic groups. Tutsis and Pygmies are both "African," but at the opposite extremes of human height. Framing the genetics of height in terms of American racial politics makes no sense.
>The source of the ideas you're asserting as fact are very dark and extremely thoroughly debunked at this point. Honestly it's kind of shameful to present these 1920s ideas as modern.
The "source of the ideas" are the peer-reviewed journals of PLoS Genet and Nature Genetics based on landmark genetic research published in 2012 and 2020. As in hundreds of other peer reviewed studies that have identified genetic markers responsible for height and how those markers vary across populations, including articles you yourself linked without apparently reading.
>Every single variation in "genetic trends" amongst cultures is negligible and otherwise entirely attributable to environmental factors.
Is the vastly higher rate of sickle cell anemia among people of West African descent is either "negligible and otherwise entirely attributable to environmental factors"? Is it simply Europeans' "environment" that causes them to go bald and get skin cancer at rates dozens of times higher than people of East Asian descent growing up in the same countries?
There are zero credible peer-reviewed journals that publish the idea that height or any other genetic traits are attributable to a single "racial group", as the biological concept of "race" does not exist.
So no, you have not linked any peer-reviewed study saying what you claim.
Note that there are no biological differences between races, as that would be considered racist. Therefore, it was not necessary to control for that during the study.
There are so many possible things that could confound this - wealth, ethnicity (for example most East and South Asian immigrants are coming to cities), I don't envy the statisticians that had to tease this apart.
Using the terminology of children turning out slightly "better" in cities in the context of height is slightly distasteful, even though it is societally quite prevalent. Height is an arbitrary physical trait, much like race. Who cares who turns out taller? Discounting malnutrition, there are no health benefits to being taller. There are of course social advantages, but the same can be said for race too. When will we begin addressing heightism in the same respect as other obviously unimportant phenotypic differences?
Malnutrition is the thing to worry about. Or perhaps toxins. We know that people don't grow to their full possible genetic height due to such things, and it seems natural to wonder if there are any other unrealized effects when they fail to reach their full possible height.
Why does it matter if they reach their full possible height, barring health complications? At least 80% of height is genetic so creating a value system based upon something that has no bearing on a person's qualities, aesthetic or psychological, is of no importance. Always substitute race for height and see how the line of argument sounds. The only difference is that one trait is generally culturally acceptable to disparage while the other is not.
It’s these reductionist arguments that lose the forest for the trees.
If we see a clear health disparity between two groups who should otherwise have equal outcomes, then it implies there’s possibly something in the environment of one group that’s negatively effecting them. And therefore could possibly have other side effects we’re not privy too.
You say height is of no importance, but a majority of women[0][1] would disagree, and men below average height would also disagree. Perhaps our evolutionary signals point to something other than “a social construct” for choosing height in mates. Wild thought.
1 - https://www.wsj.com/articles/online-dating-investing-match-t... (quote of note: “A former Bumble product manager says that a majority of women on the platform tend to set a floor of 6 feet for men, which would limit their candidate pool to about 15% of the population.“)
The majority of women, especially before we began to actually combat racism, would also agree that being white is preferable, as would black men who were subjected to the results of living in a racist society. We currently live in a heightist society so naturally being taller is perceived as better. The crux of the issues is that it shouldn't be considered better. It's a totally inconsequential trait.
> The crux of the issues is that it shouldn't be considered better. It's a totally inconsequential trait.
They physical advantages of height are very apparent and simple to understand. Even animals recognize the larger you are the safer you are (generally). How is that inconsequential?
Confused how one can come to that conclusion. If violence is not a trait in a modern society, how big people are should be of no consequence. Back in times of the caveman this was an extremely important trait because violence was an aspect of daily life that had real utility. Now, people can go their entire lives never having been in a fight.
In fact I would argue having an arms race for ever bigger humans is antisocial and detrimental... just the carbon footprint aspects alone is a good reason to discourage that. The extra stress on our food system. Bigger cars, airplanes, fuel, etc... as opposed to women dig it and you can beat people up. Really?
I'm not implying anything about the biological racial differences between humans. When I say racism, I'm talking about people of colour who experience prejudice based on the colour of their skin which is indisputable.
> does it matter if they reach their full possible height
What you’re asking is the implied question. Is the shift due to changing demographics? Or is it evidence of malnutrition, that city kids are not reaching their genetic optima?
At a population level, ceteris paribus and longitudinally, height is a health indicator. Individually or comparatively it’s useless.
Well on one hand, shorter people tend to live longer, and tend to have better health in old age. Additionally, people who eat less also tend to live longer and healthier lives. There might be a tradeoff when it comes to our height and health, like what's proposed by the antagonistic pleiotropy hypothesis.
Again, substitute the "socially beneficial" arbitrary trait of height for race and ask yourself if that sounds acceptable. Should people opt for white children simply because racism exists? Should people opt for tall children because heightism exists? How do you make the distinction in your own mind?
Sure, some forms of intelligence or other personal qualities could be opted for when choosing a mate. Should inconsequential physical traits such as race and height? You tell me. Or at least explain the distinction between the two as you see it.
I cannot agree with your premise of those physical traits being inconsequential.
For example, there is lots of construction and heavy equipment type work that require strong wrists and forearms, and if you are not born with them, then you are not going to be able to do those jobs.
Even race (or whatever classification of tribal affiliation you want) is consequential. Some people have very curly hair (for example black peoples), and it takes a lot more work to maintain. Some races have higher risk of heart disease/cholesterol problems. Some people’s skin is so lacking in melanin that they get sunburn on a cloudy day.
The premise isn't exactly that people shouldn't select for traits that they desire, rather that it is irresponsible for journalism and other forms of media to make allusions to height being a positive trait.
If people want to make judgements about a person's worth based on their racist or heightist tendencies that's their prerogative, but we have seen with racism that negatively portraying people of colour only serves to propagate negative stereotype beyond that which is "innate". It is clearly equivalent for height, given the many examples people provide of height not providing societal advantages in certain other cultures. It's by and large a cultural phenomenon, not biological.
Is it really that preposterous to expect the media not to mischaracterise people born with an arbitrary genetic trait as lesser individuals?
Highly context-dependant. You don't see too many dwarf NBA stars, for example. "The fight does not always go to the strong, nor the race to the swift. But that is the way to bet."
I think we can ignore the outlier of basketball players playing at the highest level. We could also point to CEO's of Fortune 500 companies and their races but that shouldn't lead us to make judgements about which phenotype is better.
You misread the headline. People outside cities are taller.
Also, taller people are healthier (admittedly only indirectly because of their height). It’s not just a comment on health. Height is a social advantage.
That being said, the article is a gross oversimplification. The top comment accurately points out a lack of control for even ethnicity (which would completely explain the difference in height in the US).
My point doesn't relate to whether rural or urban children become taller. Height is largely genetic, and discounting malnutrition it has no bearing on a person's health. Shorter people actually live longer on average.
Social advantages based on arbitrary phenotypic traits should not be encouraged. White people generally have social advantages given the fact that racism exists.
That's a good corroboration of my point that height being a positive characteristic is largely cultural/societal and of no true importance as it relates to a person's worth.
Fair enough, I was mostly responding to you shoehorning the white thing in there, again, being white in China/Japan isn't a social advantage, because of racism. So we can just table it at "racism" exists and is bad and should be actively discouraged, how about that?
To me, that's even further evidence that both race and height are totally inconsequential. That fact that these things can bestow social advantages is no reason to view either of them in a positive light.
Racism is certainly bad and should be discouraged. Somewhat controversially, apparently, so should heightism.
How is that valuable in a modern society that outlaws violence of that nature?
Or it is simply that you can physically intimidate people to get an upper hand in situations where such an upper-hand shouldn't be given... just because. How noble. What a useful and admirable trait to encourage.
I do not make the rules, but I do have to play by them. Even in the most “modern” societies, ask women how often they have felt their relative physical weakness used against them.
Because laws don’t do you much good when there is nobody around to enforce them. Relying on others to ensure your own life is fine, but being able to defend oneself has obvious advantages.
Even if no one is around, if you are assaulted, you can file a report and the assailant can go to jail - because by definition, they are now a criminal.
There is that deterrent in place, that social constract. Sure it can be violated, but your argument is along a similar line of folks who advocate for open carry.
> Height is largely genetic, and discounting malnutrition it has no bearing on a person's health.
But nutrition is what's being measured here. People from poorer countries are on-average shorter, and that is largely driven by diet, although childhood illness is also a factor.
The issue isn't height really, it's that people are having their growth stunted. They did not reach the height they would have if they'd gotten better food, better sanitation, etc.
It's an indicator for overall health, and more specifically for health during childhood. When indicators for health go down it's important to study them. A child who is taller is not necessarily better than one who is shorter, but a child who didn't catch a serious growth-stunting disease is definitely better off than if they had, assuming the disease had other effects.
Back when polio was common you could tell what areas had been hit the hardest and in which year by looking at average height in school photos. My grandfather had oddly short legs but a long torso because of a very mild bout of polio as a child. This is important not because he was shorter than he might have been, but because more serious cases of polio can cause paralysis, permanently malformed legs, and death. Height in this case is a proxy for worse things.
Height discrimination may actually be due to its usefulness as a proxy for genetic damage and disease load during mate selection. The same thing that causes people to unfairly discriminate makes it useful for studying population changes.
I wonder how much of this can be attributed to poor posture related to device use. Posture correction has been shown to give people back ~1-2 inches in height.
Note: I mean real posture correction through exercise and training, not the currrent fad of "devices" that fix your posture for you.
Huge disclaimer: I'm not a qualified physiotherapist and not qualified to give advice, I'm just a nerd who had awful posture and did and okay job of correcting it.
All I can tell you is what helped me:
- Improving my working ergonomics. Specifically, not being hunched over my laptop so often. People talk about great chairs, stand up desks etc, and despite having those things I didn't see much change. I found more of a change by avoiding using my laptop as a laptop unless I was away from my desk. If I'm at my desk, I'm always using an external monitor.
- For exercises I did face pulls, rows, and I made chin tucks a thing I just do sporadically throughout my working week. No gym required.
- Finally, I discovered I had very tight neck and chest muscles and doing stretching exercises for both was helpful.
On the neck and chest stretching I would just suggest taking that kind of thing very slowly, don't overdo it like I did. When I first started with those I ended up in pain because I was overstretching muscles that hadn't been stretched properly in many years (or ever).
155 comments
[ 5.7 ms ] story [ 226 ms ] threadI dare say whomever will rediscover the role sodium phosphate plays in growing bodies when consumption is greatly exceeded -- it is used as a food additive, including some soft drinks. I'm sure many soft drink brands may still use the additive, but at a much reduced rate compared to 70s, 80s and 19990s.
When I grew up, in my locale, there was an epidemic of shorter than would be expected children, some clues were there, slowly it seemed most were very thirsty and actively consuming one brand of softdrink ... as much as I liked it, more than a couple of cups caused my gut to grumble and boil for a bit. During the 90s the formulation changed or was fixed, I know it certainly changed as I no longer suffered as I once did if I happened to consume more than a couple cups in a hour. At the time I had no idea of the cause and wasn't until reading conclusions in a pretty grounded book.
[1] https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/does-carbonat...
Sodium Phosphate though is added to many foods [1] [2] -- it's something to keep in mind. It's possible due to a learning curve, that the rate applied to soft drinks has been reduced in the US as well, but I'm not privy to that sort of information.
[1] https://www.healthline.com/health/sodium-phosphate
[2] https://www.ouh.nhs.uk/patient-guide/leaflets/files/56112Pph...
What is true is that height increases each (modern first-world) generation
South Americans and Asians are, on average, shorter.
The percentage of non white immigration into those areas is frankly staggering compared to the 100+ years prior.
So yes, those groups did just move into those cities recently.
Find me a big city in the west where white people have even stayed the same in their percentage of population since 1990. I can't find any in the top 100 or so cities in the US on a 30 second search - everything is a decrease.
You made a claim, then got pissy about being asked to cite it, and are now asking me to cite something instead, as if you hadn't just flat out refused to do exactly what you're asking me now to do. The balls on you!
Haha no, that's not how burden of proof works...
Immigrants might also be throwing off the average. They tend to grow taller in North America (not just second generation), again, unsurprisingly because of diet.
India regularly tops air pollution lists: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most-polluted_cities.... You can’t totally avoid outside air.
Anecdotally I remember hearing of Chinese people moving abroad and having their chronic asthma clear up almost immediately.
However, I doubt you can pick any one specific cause and say it’s definitive.
It does not appear they controlled for ethnicity, race or any other measure of genetic stock. Doing so is important in my view. For example, the oft-cited average US male height 5'9 or 5'10", but for white American men it's more like 5'11"
I've done splicing work for several farming co-ops out west that ran fiber to the homestead. Small town of like 200 has GPON to most houses.
The only places I feel have been homogeneous with their rural areas surrounding them, have been some of nordic places like Copenhagen, Oslo, Stockholm and Tallinn.
1 - https://ggwash.org/view/6497/maps-show-racial-divides-in-gre...
Yes, but are they all ethnically skewed in the same way? If the concern is genetic factors, it doesn't really matter if cities have different ethnic demographics than rural areas in all two hundred countries as long as the rural/urban racial skew is different in the different countries.
For example, in the US rural areas may tend to be whiter than urban areas, but in countries that aren't predominantly caucasian, the opposite may be true.
But Tulsa, OK vs the surrounding non-metro counties? I'm less certain without diving into the data.
The median US city size is Naperville, IL at 149,104 people.[0]
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_b...
Naperville is a suburb of Chicago, and without looking I can confidently tell you that it's more white than Chicago, but less white than a nearby rural area. I will look though: https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/chicagocityilli...
Cities in mostly ethnically homogeneous states tend to still have things of value that might draw people of diverse ethnic backgrounds. I'm in Nashville Tennessee and there are far more people of Asian or middle Eastern descent here in the city than there are in the surrounding rural areas, due to the universities and the job opportunities which draw people from out of state.
But if by “a priori” you mean something innate in humans or mathematical, I think you’ll be hard pressed to find that. Or what that really means in this context.
A priori = Beforehand, or before analysis performed. Standard phrasing in research, defines reasonable hypotheses to test.
For example, most americans have a-priori knowledge that rural americans are demographically whiter than urban americans, and could hypothesize global trends.
If that counts as an a priori reason - I’ll take it. In summary: “A priori” is ambiguous here / not a very useful modifier afaict.
In Western countries, yes.
> The total 2020 enumerated population of all [331] cities over 100,000 is 96,598,047, representing 29.14% of the United States population (excluding territories)
From: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities...
So, for instance, Greater Los Angeles has more than 18 million people by itself, where your source lists it as under 4 million.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_Los_Angeles
Space may change that. we may end up with some very strange looking sections of humanity once we get into space.
Here are the sources-
The best one that I can think of is the fact that rural children probably spend more time outside engaging in physical activity. Even in the US, I know of high schools where a substantial number of the students are working full-time jobs outside during the summer, in addition to doing outdoors sports and other activities during the school year.
Perhaps tall people are more likely to find work in rural areas and short people's skills are more likely to align with urban environments.
I still wonder if there is something else going on. But feel like instead of a survey of 200 countries it would be more interesting to just focus on one country with a more homogenous genetic population and measure lots of different possibel variables
I think the point is that looking at 200 countries makes the possibility of confounding factors much lower
Or are you suggesting that non-genetic cultural factors could be at play here too? Possibly!
If whatever you wanted to say agrees with this, I agree with it; if it disagrees, I disagree with it.
I don't see cultures mentioned anywhere in the article or the comment you replied to.
If mean that there are no differences in the genes that determine height across populations, that is incorrect. For example, the average male height in Pygmy populations is 5 feet, or about 7 inches lower than Cameroon's Bantu populations who live alongside Pygmies. We know there are genetic differences between Pygmy and Bantu populations that are specifically associated with height, and that average Pygmy height increases along with the percentage of Bantu ancestry (https://journals.plos.org/plosgenetics/article/info%3Adoi%2F...). Similarly, differences in height across European populations have been demonstrated to be partly due to differences in the hundreds of genes associated with height (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3480734/).
One group in all of humanity happened to have measurable differences in genes affecting height?
How does that explain the many other distinct "Pygmy" groups entirely separate from those in West Africa, such as those in the Philippines, who have genetic differences in growth hormones that cause them to be shorter (https://doi.org/10.1515/JPEM.2002.15.3.269)? "Pygmy" simply refers to one of these many groups, they are genetically and geographically distinct.
Pygmy groups show how absurd the claim that there are no differences in height is, but the same kind of variation has been shown within European groups on a smaller scale (consistent with the greater genetic diversity in Africa than Europe). We know that similar differences in genes that influence height exist, to a less extreme degree, across all populations. For example, males in both the Tutsi and Dinka ethnic groups average nearly 6' tall, despite living in areas where malnutrition is/was widespread and alongside other groups that are much shorter on average.
I'm genuinely curious where you got the idea that there are no genetic differences affecting height between ethnic groups/countries. Researchers have identified genetic markers responsible for the majority of variation in human height among Europeans (https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/588020v1), and shown that those markers vary significantly across European groups just as they do in Africa (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3480734/).
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-03622-z
https://www.nature.com/articles/136736a0
https://www.imperial.ac.uk/news/193488/race-science-about-bi...
https://www.nature.com/articles/153604a0
https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674660038
https://sitn.hms.harvard.edu/flash/2017/science-genetics-res...
https://medlineplus.gov/genetics/understanding/traits/height...
https://www.jstor.org/stable/3180830
Every single variation in "genetic trends" amongst cultures is negligible and otherwise entirely attributable to environmental factors.
The source of the ideas you're asserting as fact are very dark and extremely thoroughly debunked at this point. Honestly it's kind of shameful to present these 1920s ideas as modern.
Individually yes, genetics contribute to height, but the full range of height genetics exist in every culture.
"The full range of incomes exist in every country, therefore differences in average incomes across countries must be negligible."
You've linked a long list of articles talking about race in America and Brazil, none of which I can see claim that there are no differences in genetic height by ethnic group. One is a book from 1944 that rightly rejects racially discriminatory policies and argues "that experience rather than inborn traits determines standards of social conduct." What part of that supports the idea that the 6' Tutsis or Croats are genetically predisposed to the same height as the Taron who average 4'3?
The MedlinePlus article you linked explicitly says "in some cases, ethnicity plays a role in adult height."
"Race" categories as described by all of your links that I saw ("black"/"white") are crude aggregations of hundreds of ethnic groups. Tutsis and Pygmies are both "African," but at the opposite extremes of human height. Framing the genetics of height in terms of American racial politics makes no sense.
>The source of the ideas you're asserting as fact are very dark and extremely thoroughly debunked at this point. Honestly it's kind of shameful to present these 1920s ideas as modern.
The "source of the ideas" are the peer-reviewed journals of PLoS Genet and Nature Genetics based on landmark genetic research published in 2012 and 2020. As in hundreds of other peer reviewed studies that have identified genetic markers responsible for height and how those markers vary across populations, including articles you yourself linked without apparently reading.
>Every single variation in "genetic trends" amongst cultures is negligible and otherwise entirely attributable to environmental factors.
Is the vastly higher rate of sickle cell anemia among people of West African descent is either "negligible and otherwise entirely attributable to environmental factors"? Is it simply Europeans' "environment" that causes them to go bald and get skin cancer at rates dozens of times higher than people of East Asian descent growing up in the same countries?
So no, you have not linked any peer-reviewed study saying what you claim.
If we see a clear health disparity between two groups who should otherwise have equal outcomes, then it implies there’s possibly something in the environment of one group that’s negatively effecting them. And therefore could possibly have other side effects we’re not privy too.
You say height is of no importance, but a majority of women[0][1] would disagree, and men below average height would also disagree. Perhaps our evolutionary signals point to something other than “a social construct” for choosing height in mates. Wild thought.
0 - https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01918...
1 - https://www.wsj.com/articles/online-dating-investing-match-t... (quote of note: “A former Bumble product manager says that a majority of women on the platform tend to set a floor of 6 feet for men, which would limit their candidate pool to about 15% of the population.“)
They physical advantages of height are very apparent and simple to understand. Even animals recognize the larger you are the safer you are (generally). How is that inconsequential?
In fact I would argue having an arms race for ever bigger humans is antisocial and detrimental... just the carbon footprint aspects alone is a good reason to discourage that. The extra stress on our food system. Bigger cars, airplanes, fuel, etc... as opposed to women dig it and you can beat people up. Really?
An individual person’s height isn’t an indicator of health but in aggregate the statistics matter.
I don’t see the analogy with race working in this context.
What you’re asking is the implied question. Is the shift due to changing demographics? Or is it evidence of malnutrition, that city kids are not reaching their genetic optima?
At a population level, ceteris paribus and longitudinally, height is a health indicator. Individually or comparatively it’s useless.
Do you think any part of intelligence or behavior is a physical attribute that can be affected by genes?
For example, there is lots of construction and heavy equipment type work that require strong wrists and forearms, and if you are not born with them, then you are not going to be able to do those jobs.
Even race (or whatever classification of tribal affiliation you want) is consequential. Some people have very curly hair (for example black peoples), and it takes a lot more work to maintain. Some races have higher risk of heart disease/cholesterol problems. Some people’s skin is so lacking in melanin that they get sunburn on a cloudy day.
If people want to make judgements about a person's worth based on their racist or heightist tendencies that's their prerogative, but we have seen with racism that negatively portraying people of colour only serves to propagate negative stereotype beyond that which is "innate". It is clearly equivalent for height, given the many examples people provide of height not providing societal advantages in certain other cultures. It's by and large a cultural phenomenon, not biological.
Is it really that preposterous to expect the media not to mischaracterise people born with an arbitrary genetic trait as lesser individuals?
Also, taller people are healthier (admittedly only indirectly because of their height). It’s not just a comment on health. Height is a social advantage.
That being said, the article is a gross oversimplification. The top comment accurately points out a lack of control for even ethnicity (which would completely explain the difference in height in the US).
Social advantages based on arbitrary phenotypic traits should not be encouraged. White people generally have social advantages given the fact that racism exists.
Racism is certainly bad and should be discouraged. Somewhat controversially, apparently, so should heightism.
Or it is simply that you can physically intimidate people to get an upper hand in situations where such an upper-hand shouldn't be given... just because. How noble. What a useful and admirable trait to encourage.
There is that deterrent in place, that social constract. Sure it can be violated, but your argument is along a similar line of folks who advocate for open carry.
And if you are killed? There is a strong appeal to reducing the likelihood you will die.
But nutrition is what's being measured here. People from poorer countries are on-average shorter, and that is largely driven by diet, although childhood illness is also a factor.
The issue isn't height really, it's that people are having their growth stunted. They did not reach the height they would have if they'd gotten better food, better sanitation, etc.
Back when polio was common you could tell what areas had been hit the hardest and in which year by looking at average height in school photos. My grandfather had oddly short legs but a long torso because of a very mild bout of polio as a child. This is important not because he was shorter than he might have been, but because more serious cases of polio can cause paralysis, permanently malformed legs, and death. Height in this case is a proxy for worse things.
Height discrimination may actually be due to its usefulness as a proxy for genetic damage and disease load during mate selection. The same thing that causes people to unfairly discriminate makes it useful for studying population changes.
Note: I mean real posture correction through exercise and training, not the currrent fad of "devices" that fix your posture for you.
All I can tell you is what helped me:
- Improving my working ergonomics. Specifically, not being hunched over my laptop so often. People talk about great chairs, stand up desks etc, and despite having those things I didn't see much change. I found more of a change by avoiding using my laptop as a laptop unless I was away from my desk. If I'm at my desk, I'm always using an external monitor.
- For exercises I did face pulls, rows, and I made chin tucks a thing I just do sporadically throughout my working week. No gym required.
- Finally, I discovered I had very tight neck and chest muscles and doing stretching exercises for both was helpful.
On the neck and chest stretching I would just suggest taking that kind of thing very slowly, don't overdo it like I did. When I first started with those I ended up in pain because I was overstretching muscles that hadn't been stretched properly in many years (or ever).