Truong Hong Son, director of the Vietnam Institute of Applied Medicine, told the launch of the “For an Era of Tall and Healthy Vietnamese” campaign on May 12 that the country’s average male height has reached 168.1 cm and female height 156.2 cm, according to a survey conducted by Vietnam’s General Statistics Office and the National Institute of Nutrition.
The surge has lifted Vietnam past Indonesia and the Philippines to fourth place in Southeast Asia, behind Singapore, Malaysia, and Thailand.
Son described the pace as the fastest ever recorded in Vietnam, comparable to Japan’s “golden period” from the mid-1950s through the mid-1990s, when postwar Japanese men gained more than 10 cm before stature plateaued.
But in the modern global context, Vietnam’s growth is still slow, as the country is placed in the bottom 30% of nations measured by the NCD Risk Factor Collaboration.
Vietnamese young men remain roughly 3 cm shorter than the global male average of 171 cm.
High school students at a youth basketball tournament held in Ho Chi Minh City on June 1, 2025. Photo courtesy of VYBC |
Son pointed to three persistent brakes on growth: diets short on micronutrients, unscientific lifestyles, and low rates of physical activity among school-age children. Of the four factors shaping stature, he said, genetics accounts for about 23% and nutrition for 32%, with the rest driven by exercise and sleep.
Vietnam’s schools, he argued, have not built consistent fitness habits or evenly distributed nutrition education across the system, while shifting environmental conditions and disease patterns continue to add new risk factors.
Low average height threatens Vietnam’s broader push to upgrade workforce quality and demands what officials have framed as a three-pronged intervention covering nutrition, exercise, and applied research.
A resolution issued by the Politburo in 2025 calls for adding at least 1.5 cm to the average height of Vietnamese aged 1 to 18 by 2030. Son projected that if current trends hold, Vietnamese men could reach roughly 172 cm and women 159 cm by then.
Comments are closed.