Before I started researching height differences in heterosexual couples, I held two assumptions that you might share:
- Men tend to be taller than women.
- Women tend to prefer taller men.
It turns out both of those are correct, but the number of inches we’re talking about is still pretty fascinating. What’s more, there are studies that show who’s choosing a partner based on height, why they’re doing it and how height differs in homosexual relationships.
A study published this year in the Journal of Family Issues found that women’s height preferences are far stronger than men’s. Forty-nine percent of women only wanted to date men who were taller than they were, whereas only 13.5 percent of men only wanted to date women shorter than they were. By contrast, only 1.7 percent of women said they would only date a shorter man — a conveniently similar figure to the 1.3 percent of men who say they would only date a taller woman.
Related on the SLP
Before you go critiquing women’s picky and primitive mating choices, I’d like to point you in the direction of abundant research that suggests that men choose female partners based on their waist-to-hip ratio. Unsurprisingly, physical attributes (either height or width) probably aren’t the smartest basis for choosing a partner. In fact, shorter men (the average height for a male adult in the U.S. is 5 feet 9) might be a real catch. A study published in the National Bureau of Economic Research in August found that shorter men tend to divorce at lower rates (though it also found that men who are shorter than their spouses do less housework than men who are taller than their spouses).
Read full, original article: How Common Is It For A Man To Be Shorter Than His Partner?
