Short stature

Short stature refers to a height of a human being which is below typical. Whether a person is considered short depends on the context. Because of the lack of preciseness, there is often disagreement about the degree of shortness that should be called short.

In a medical context, short stature is typically defined as an adult height that is more than two standard deviations below the mean for age and gender, which corresponds to the shortest 2.3% of individuals. In developed countries, this typically includes adult men who are shorter than 163 centimetres (5 ft 4 in) tall and adult women who are shorter than 150 centimetres (4 ft 11 in) tall. Again though, when shortness is called "short" is debatable, others would say 170 centimetres (5 ft 7 in) and 157 centimetres (5 ft 2 in) for men and women respectively due to those heights being one standard deviation below the average for each of their genders, while others would say 155 centimetres (5 ft 1 in) for men and 143 centimetres (4 ft 8 in) for women since both heights are three standard deviations below the average for their respective genders. In either of those cases, by comparison, the median or typical adult height in these populations (as the widely abundant statistics from these countries clearly state) is about 170.5 centimetres (5 ft 7.1 in) for men and 160 centimetres (5 ft 3 in) for women.