Why are men growing at a faster pace than women

For over a century, scientists have been studying how men and women grow physically. While it’s well known that men are generally taller and more muscular than women, recent data shows that men’s physical growth—especially in terms of height and weight—has significantly outpaced women’s over the last 100 years.
This disparity, known as

sexual size dimorphism

(SSD), provides information into how evolution, living conditions, and socio-ecological factors impact growth. Here’s why men seem to be growing faster than women and what this tells us about human development.

Men’s growth and evolutionary traits

Men’s taller and more muscular stature has long been associated with evolutionary advantages, such as physical competition and attractiveness to potential mates. However, these traits come at a higher developmental cost. Research shows that early exposure to stressors like disease or poor nutrition disproportionately affects men’s growth compared to women. This means that men’s height and weight are more sensitive to changes in living conditions, amplifying growth disparities when environments improve.

The role of improved living conditions

Over the last century, better healthcare, nutrition, and overall living conditions have contributed to increases in height and weight across populations. Men’s growth gains have been more than double those of women. In the UK during the first half of the 20th century, men’s height increased 2.76 times more than women’s. In Nigeria, it was found that men from nutritionally stressed regions were 7.5 cm shorter than their better-nourished peers, while women showed a smaller difference of just 3.2 cm. These findings suggest that men’s growth is more responsive to improvements in living conditions than women’s.

Understanding the gender growth gap

One reason for this disparity lies in the biology of sexually selected traits. Just as the horns of male ibexes are indicators of their health, men’s height and weight are condition-dependent traits that fluctuate with developmental conditions. In countries with better living standards, men’s physical traits show greater improvements than women’s. This gives rise to the idea that men’s growth is a more sensitive marker of environmental conditions.

How nutrition and stress shape growth

The gap between men’s and women’s growth becomes more pronounced in regions with improved access to nutrition. Richer nations, with abundant energy-dense processed foods, have enabled significant weight gains in select individuals—more so among men. Early exposure to stressors, such as diseases or malnutrition, also impacts men more severely, making their growth more variable depending on living conditions. For women, the impact of such stressors appears to be less extreme, resulting in more consistent growth patterns.

What does this mean as far as health is concerned?

The conclusions drawn from a century’s worth of data show that patterns of male growth can be useful markers of community health. Because it represents the early developmental environment, height in particular is a potent biomarker for evaluating living situations.