I can understand why $100,000 spent on HGH resulting in an increase of only 1-2 inches is probably not going to yield a good return on your investment. But is there any research on the more invasive technique of breaking your legs and then putting them in a metal cast with screws, that are adjustable to keep the broken leg bones slightly apart, so that they attempt to fuse, and thereby grow. I've heard that this can result in height increases of up to 5".

Speaking of short men, my sister who is 5' 4", dated shorter guys most of her life, as short as 5' 1", as she felt they were more attentive of their mates - though she did end up marrying a guy who was 5' 9", the tallest guy she ever dated.

A related idea, not getting at long-term height but relative height and maturity in a class, is to keep your kid back a year so he's a year older, smarter, stronger, taller, etc., than his classmates. This is really common. I wonder if anyone's looked into whether it pays off. (One comment: it certainly cuts a year off your adult life, since you're almost certainly a year older when you graduate high school, or college, or get your MD or PhD or whatever. I'm not sure whether that's inherently bad (maybe the extra year of childhood is more fun than the extra year of adulthood), but it's worth noting. If everyone does this, it will probably have a measurable economic effect....)

Jason,

you wrote,


So the largest scientifically verified benefit of this $100,000 treatment is less sex partners!

You go on about the causation/correlation fallacy, but you make it here. Might this correlation be because short men whose parents gave them the HGH treatment inherited from said parents the belief that shortness was a liability and have lowered self-esteem because of it, leading them to have less partners than short men whose self esteem was not damaged since their parents accepted their shortness?

BTW, I think too many societies are designed around the short; but being one who is in the right tail of the height bell curve (6'3") I'm a little biased. However, bus, train, and airline seats are mighty uncomfortable if one is built like a linebacker as I am.

You go on about the causation/correlation fallacy, but you make it here

Only if you completely ignore the very next sentence, and the entire rest of the post devoted to explaining why I am skeptical of that result.

Still, it shows what it shows. Of course it might be for the reason you say, or any number of possible differences in the self-selected HGH children (who are less than 10% of Americans below the 1st percentile).

pconroy -
I've heard of that leg-breaking technique, it seems to be especially popular in East Asia, but it nonetheless seems quite inadequate as a solution to extreme shortness as the subject would end up with wildly disproportionate limb sizes.

Err... sales skill and marriage might both result from some unknown third factor, but when it comes to height we know with pretty high confidence that it is not, to any substantial degree, caused by some third factor. This paper calls height 88% hereditary
http://biomed.gerontologyjournal...tract/50/4/ B237. Twin studies basically kill socio-economic explanations.

Here's an interesting site - Arjan's Tall Pages - which categorizes male and female height for the USA, Germany, Japan and the Netherlands.

Err... sales skill and marriage might both result from some unknown third factor, but when it comes to height we know with pretty high confidence that it is not, to any substantial degree, caused by some third factor. This paper calls height 88% hereditary

Mike, you seem to have missed the point. What does the heritability of height have to do with its association between, say, suicide or income? It was the relationship between height and other favorable outcomes that some might question whether there was a third variable causing both.

For example what if height and higher income are both just caused by better childhood nutrition - the relationship between the variables would therefore just be accidental and giving someone a "height implant" would have no effect on their income.

Compare that to an example where people actually do pay taller people more because they think taller people work harder. "Leg implants" would have a posiive effect on income, because the relationship is causal.

Peter,

Well then you could break the arms too and extend them ;0)

Cheaper way to test whether relative height per se makes a diff: Just take a sub-average American guy like myself (5'8), transplant him to a country where the average height would put him at least 1 SD above the mean (say, Vietnam, where males average ~5'3), and see if after a year or so he developed a commanding presence, had higher self-reported confidence, had more success closing deals (or whatever my job would require), etc.

If relative height here-and-now is what matters, then I should blossom into a more confident, successful person (similar to leg implants or hormones here and now). If what matters is how tall I was growing up, then I wouldn't have terribly more success or confidence.

I got the idea from the analogous case of romantic success and height. I lived in Barcelona for about one year (average male height in Spain ~5'8, shortest in the EU), and I noticed that I was considered much more attractive there than here. As measured by being approached, ability to hold a girl's interest, etc. However, I never got used to it and still felt crippingly shy approaching girls. It didn't help matters that they were among the most beautiful on Earth...

BTW, if it turns out that relative height here-and-now DOES matter, then that would present a much cheaper solution than hormones or leg implants -- just move to where the men are shorter than where you grew up, the shorter the better. Sounds drastic, but as if spending 100s of 1000s of $ on hormones or invasive surgery is like taking over-the-counter stuff? Financial and romantic success are pretty big motivators, so many sub-avg men might opt for a nation transplant (if not a leg transplant).

Jason

The debate as to whether married men make more money because of a selection effect (some third factor that improves marriagability and income) or a productivity effect (marriage makes men more productive) is not closed, but the evidence leans towards the productivity hypothesis.

That's cause married men not only make more (a one time jump), their annual wage increases are higher than single men. And divorce/widowerhood lowers the wage increases back towards the single level.

My personal experience is that any productivity effect from marriage is due to the increased productivity from not have to engage in the kind of activities associated with looking for a "partner".

That is, before I was married I spent a reasonable amount of time socializing, including drinking and staying out late. That behavior was reduced substantially once I was married, and virtually eliminated once I had children.

I will go as far as saying that being married reduces the time I spend thinking about relationship issues, thus allowing me to focus on other aspects of my life including career.

It is hard for me to see how my wife helps my career in any other way, but maybe I need to think about it some more.

Paraphrasing Yogi Berra -- It's not the sex that makes ‘em tired, it’s staying out all night looking for it.

"She told the women that the shorter men included a doctor, a best-selling author, a champion skier, a venture capitalist who'd made millions by the age of 25.
Nothing worked."
What's the occupation and status of the tall men?

Tom Cruise vs Larry Bird, my money is on Tom Cruise.

Okay, so I can see that being married has gotten rid of the dating treadmill in my life, which was a genunie time sink. But I am deeply skeptical that I was spending more time and mental energy on dating when I was single than I am now on helping raise two children.

I propose two alternative explanations:

a. Prospective mates, especially women seeking to marry men, evaluate how much of a future you have. They're reasonably good at that, so the fact that someone wanted to marry you is evidence that you appeared to her to have some kind of success ahead of you.

b. A married man (especially with kids or a stay-at-home wife) has more expenses. He has an incentive to shape his career more toward better money than toward other things (like better working conditions), he has a stronger incentive to bargain for a raise, change jobs to get more money, etc.

It seems like both of these would drive you toward the marriage/income correlation.

Treating kids w short stature w HGH is done EXCLUSIVELY by paediatric endocrinologists.

Being a pediatric physician myself and married to a pediatric endocrinologist, I have had extensive discussions about this issue with my better half over the years. Not the least because our kids are short.

Here are some additional factoids which do not make it into the discussion above.

1. There is absolutely no way to tease out the science. There are opposing camps, they are split and are venemous in their opposition to the other point of view. The fight is religious, not rational. The only study done on this issue - hgh for kids with constitutional short stature, - indicated a benefit - I recall it being more than 1 inch but I could be mistaken. The scientific and ethical and political climate is so charged up that I doubt if any more studies are possibleat present.

2. There is no reason that HGH costs as much as it does. historically the initial reason for the high cost of HGH was that it was extracted from cadavers. It is now all produced using recombinant DNA technology. My guess is that the patents have expired, but two or three companies have the market sewn up between them, and so, go on charging thousands of $'s for what costs pennies to produce. My guess is that as long as HGH remains an orphan drug - that is a drug with a very small market ( and true HGh deficiency is a very rare condition) there will be no downwards pressure on price. Consequently no good studies will come out to resolve the issue. My impression tho is that the walls of orthodoxy are crumbling albeit slowly.

Jason: Since childhood nutrition accounts for at most 12% of height, and surely far less among families who can pay $100,000 for growth hormone, the impact of childhood nutrition on adult income would have to be implausibly huge for the correlation with height to average this high. The correlation between height and IQ is likewise far too weak to explain the income results (and presumably explains some small part of the IQ income correlation as well as the height income correlation).

Being a pediatric physician myself and married to a pediatric endocrinologist, I have had extensive discussions about this issue with my better half over the years. Not the least because our kids are short.

Vic, do you agree with the estimates of $20,000 per year for a five year treatment? That seems high. When does treatment typically start and how long does it last?

It really does represent a stark case of wealth enabling the purchase of enhanced physical characteristics.

An inch or two may not be worth $100,000, but how about US$10,000?

Purchasing hGH Tijuana

I don't look forward to making these types of decisions for myself or my kids. But, having a choice is better than not having one, isn't it?

Is there literature on the benefits/drawbacks of tallness in women? In terms of earnings/career success, I've noticed that women (particularly those in male dominated workplaces/fields) who most successfully exert their authority over male subordinates and in general are perceived as most commanding/powerful are tall women or at least women who are at eye-level with most men - men don't have to literally look down on them when communicating with them.

As far as social/romatic success goes, I'd say that if her face is attractive, tallness enhances a woman's appeal quite a bit. If she's unattractive, I'm guessing it lowers her appeal if only by making her more conspicuous?

Like everything else in medicine and its financing MSRP's are misleading.

The list price is 20,000. However if you have insurance, in most instances the insurance companywould have negotiated discounts which would be considerably less.

as a physician there are procedures that i charge > 1000 $ for but get paid under 100.

But the real elephant in the room is the fact that recombinant HGH has been around for at least 20 years. While not an expert on paharmaceautuical patents, my guess is that ely-lillies patent has long expired. the generic HGH makers havent come in as the market is very very small.

Just to give you an idea of how small the market, there are only 15-20 peds endos in illinois. my spouse's practice is among the bigger volume /md practices. She isnt around today so i cannot ask the exact number but my guess is that she sees less than 5-10 new kids that she puts on HGH in an year.

so let us see around 200-250 new patients an year in a biggish state like illinois. drug companies NEED to charge large amounts in order to maintain profitability.

However if we start treating the constitutional short staure kids w HGH. the market might increase a hundredfold or more. and cost of Rx will decrease. or at least thats what i think.

just looked at purchasing hgh in tijuana - was reminded of the spam I used to get some time ago about buying hgh cheap.

I really think that a big part of the story is the visceral antipathy many have against genetic/pharmaceutical enhancement.

5-6 years ago there was actually a spurt of interest in hgh as an antiaging drug.

20,000,year vs 1000/yr is a big difference

PConroy,

Here's an interesting site - Arjan's Tall Pages - which categorizes male and female height for the USA, Germany, Japan and the Netherlands.

Nice site, but their database seems a little old.

I've heard since the 1970's that the average US male is 5'9", which should have gone down with as much immigration as we've had from lower height populations. Plus aging Baby-Boomers shrink a little. I would be surprized if the average male height in Los Angeles is over 5'6". Sorry, no metric equivalent.

Agnostic,

take a sub-average American guy like myself (5'8), transplant him to a country where the average height would put him at least 1 SD above the mean (say, Vietnam, where males average ~5'3), and see if after a year or so he developed a commanding presence, had higher self-reported confidence, had more success closing deals (or whatever my job would require), etc.

Why do you think Thailand is such a popular global vacation spot? Not that I've been, but I've heard. ;-)

Of course, tall height has disadvantages, like losing 5 years or so of life expectancy for every inch over 6'2". Ouch.

Somehow, I'm visualizing this set of lethal head-bumping incidents explaining this relationship....

Honestly, is there any notion of the cause here? (Like, is the mortality difference mostly in accidents, or heart problems, or cancer, or what?)

There is an illicit market in HGH, as some athletes find it produces steroid-like strength gains while remaining almost undetectable on drug tests. Could this contribute to its high cost in a therapeutic setting?

Why does the study fail to mention the important social/ethnic differences that height relates to?

Those of low SES vary considerably from the mid and upper classmen in height, IQ and a host of other vital parameters. Therefore, it is less than a wonder that the short[i.e. mostly low SES, low IQ] commit suicide at much higher rates. Indeed, these people die by all violence at far higher rates even factoring out suicide.

By the way, these "poor" shorties are also the people responsible for our high urban crime rates, but leave it to the super-libs to find a sociological explanation(justification?) for the "misbehavior".

So, aside from the occasional pituitary dwarfism, the short probably overwhelmingly come from low SES, low IQ backrounds. An obvious culprit would appear to be nutrition, but, as far as is currently visible, the lowest SES groups appear to be the most rotund and well fed. Even the babies tend to be chubby. You just don't see the obesity in those gated communities.

"Speaking of short men, my sister who is 5' 4", dated shorter guys most of her life, as short as 5' 1", as she felt they were more attentive of their mates - though she did end up marrying a guy who was 5' 9", the tallest guy she ever dated."

I doubt this is typical. Exceptions always prove the rule. Guys are usually taller than their mates. Some of the few guys who aren't are the ultra rich types, like the singer Prince.

"Tom Cruise vs Larry Bird, my money is on Tom Cruise."

There is a probably a 'threshold' height that guys should have. There are probably diminshing returns for every inch after that. Tom Cruise probably already has attained the threshold.

That said, Larry Bird is a rather unattractive guy. Put any good looking guy like Tom Cruise against a taller good looking guy (I dunno, like a young Tom Selleck) and ignore everybody's celebrity status and wealth. My guess is that height will be a real help- even against guys who have attained the 'threshold' height.

" take a sub-average American guy like myself (5'8), transplant him to a country where the average height would put him at least 1 SD above the mean (say, Vietnam, where males average ~5'3), and see if after a year or so he developed a commanding presence, had higher self-reported confidence, had more success closing deals (or whatever my job would require), etc. "

This seems like a really interesting study proposal. I bet you'd get a ton of short guys willing to volunteer to go to SE Asia for the love of science.

"Of course, tall height has disadvantages, like losing 5 years or so of life expectancy for every inch over 6'2". Ouch."

Yeah, but quality of life issues might outweigh this negative for tall guys.

BTW, you know how stupid this height controversy is in the age of gunpowder? The armed forces prefer smaller guys because they are less easy to pick off and can still hold a rifle. If height is thought by women to be an indication of how well the man can protect her, it's funny that the most dangerous criminals (at least in L.A.) are these 5'5 Mexican and El Salvadorean gangbangers. I suspect height is 'hardwired' into our brains due to our species being predominantly a hunter- gatherer type for most of out time on Earth.

I doubt that the proposed expedition of short men from the US to SE Asia would yield accurate or useful results, since the base motivation for any local women who pursue them will be the same regardless of their physical attributes (money, promise of a better life abroad).

That being said, I think height does make a world of difference to male sexual attractiveness - at least in Anglo-saxon countries.

"...'hardwired' into our brains due to our species being predominantly a hunter- gatherer type for most of our time on earth."

Yes. I suspect that that the tallest would have made the best hunter-protectors, and that the best hunter-protectors would also have been the brightest. I further suspect that an IQ-height correlation has been with us from time immemorial.

The stocky, vile and feebleminded material they now call 'gangbangsters' would hardly last a week in a hunter-protector lifestyle.

Most of the exceptions that I've met to the prevailing stereotype that Eastern Asian men are sexually unsuccessful have been quite tall or buff. In fact, I think differences in build and height are the chief source of that stereotype in the first place - most women from the US or Commonwealth countries do not find men who are shorter or slighter than themselves to be attractive. And most Asian men - certainly those raised in their home countries - fall within that category.

I've heard that this preference is not so pronounced in other cultures - France and the Latin countries, for example. According to my French friends, excess height and bulk are major liabilities with women back home.

Those of low SES vary considerably from the mid and upper classmen in height, IQ and a host of other vital parameters. Therefore, it is less than a wonder that the short[i.e. mostly low SES, low IQ] commit suicide at much higher rates. Indeed, these people die by all violence at far higher rates even factoring out suicide.

By the way, these "poor" shorties are also the people responsible for our high urban crime rates, but leave it to the super-libs to find a sociological explanation(justification?) for the "misbehavior".

So, aside from the occasional pituitary dwarfism, the short probably overwhelmingly come from low SES, low IQ backrounds. An obvious culprit would appear to be nutrition, but, as far as is currently visible, the lowest SES groups appear to be the most rotund and well fed. Even the babies tend to be chubby. You just don't see the obesity in those gated communities.

What is SES?

African americans commit a lot of crime and they are not short, no?

Seem like you are talking about hispanics, but is that really a comprehensive picture?

Of course, tall height has disadvantages, like losing 5 years or so of life expectancy for every inch over 6'2". Ouch.
that sounds awfully high. Like "basketball players would be dead before they hit 20" high.
And I don't just say that because I don't want to expect to die in my early 50's.

I originally meant send men to a short-male country to investigate their OCCUPATIONAL success -- would they be better businessmen if overnight they were perceived and treated as tall?

I didn't mean send them there to get women. If you wanted to investigate that, you're rightly skeptical, but then just send below-avg height Swedes (say, 5'9 - 5'10), who aren't perceived as very commanding and manly back home, to Spain or Greece and see if they fare better. The latter are both EU countries and thus women could move to Sweden at will; their motivation would be romantic, not cynical.

"I've heard that this preference is not so pronounced in other cultures - France and the Latin countries, for example. According to my French friends, excess height and bulk are major liabilities with women back home."
When I noticed this in Barcelona, I thought of it as the difference between the Medieval Viking Warrior ideal up north and the Classical Greek Adolescent ideal down south.

let's watch the anecdote and speculation saturation guys. this is an interesting topic, but the data/citation:opinion ratio is starting to get out of wack. i'll simply start deleting the dumber comments at some point if people can't restrain themselves ;)

"If height is thought by women to be an indication of how well the man can protect her, it's funny that the most dangerous criminals (at least in L.A.) are these 5'5 Mexican and El Salvadorean gangbangers."

Attributable, no doubt, to firearms.

"I originally meant send men to a short-male country to investigate their OCCUPATIONAL success -- would they be better businessmen if overnight they were perceived and treated as tall?"

I recall a friend telling me that height seems to be a crucial and indispensable element of success on Wall Street and in the corporate sphere - and that there are very few prominent I-Bankers who are not significantly taller than average.

"When I noticed this in Barcelona, I thought of it as the difference between the Medieval Viking Warrior ideal up north and the Classical Greek Adolescent ideal down south."

I cannot claim any expertise with regard to Italy or Spain themselves, but my impression of the Mediterranean population in my home country (Italian, Greek, Lebanese) is that macho, boorish behaviour is even more prevalent/acceptable than amongst the majority Anglo-celts.
And that guys who indulge in such behaviour claim all the fly honeys.

In my experience, many physically attractive women suffer from a decided predilection for obnoxious, arrogant men (i.e. my girlfriends).

"African americans commit alot of crime and they are not short, no?"

Well, no, they aren't 'short', but they still seem considerably smaller than rural caucasian men. I can't remember where, but i have seen some data to support this.

[offer data, or your assertions will be deleted. FYI, 2 seconds of google, Average height and weight charts. last chance. -razib]

Edited By Siteowner

Recommendation; despite its flaws, read "Blink".
If genes for height were beneficial in the ancestral environment, they would be fixed. Since height helps one to attract women, it probably impairs hunting-gathering, generating an equilibrium, but holding genetics constant height indicates health/fitness.

I've noticed that women overestimate average male height by several inches. I think they just don't notice all the men who're below their mandatory minimum.

Kind of like women notice that they're lots of male executives and surgeons, but don't notice that alot of men work at Burger King

Bocknecht: I further suspect that an IQ-height correlation has been with us from time immemorial.


And how do you explain the Japanese? You cannot choose your data to explain your suspicion.

In the US, shorter and wider king-sized mattresses are commonly sold in the NE called 'East Coast Kings'; while mattresses 4" longer and 4" narrower sell more commonly further west called 'California Kings', or 'Western Kings'.

This is a good indication of average regional height variance, though immigration (especially to CA) is rapidly changing that.

Since NE residents from Boston, NY & Philly generally make more $$$ than other Americans, especially the taller US citizens of the upper mid-west, this is a variation on the theme that taller men make more money.

" FYI, 2 seconds of google"

Speaking of google, check out what they are doing these days.

type the word failure without the quotes on google search bar, hit the button " IM FEELING LUCKY", see what you get.

raj wrote, in relation to dating short men:
I doubt this is typical. Exceptions always prove the rule. Guys are usually taller than their mates. Some of the few guys who aren't are the ultra rich types, like the singer Prince.

I guess that I should have mentioned that my sister went for short guys who were both more macho and buff than average. This in fact may compensate for any height shortfall.

Kennteoh wrote:
In my experience, many physically attractive women suffer from a decided predilection for obnoxious, arrogant men (i.e. my girlfriends).

Ken, I didn't realize you were obnoxious and arrogant!

"I further suspect that an IQ-height correlation has been with us from time immemorial"

The IQ-height correlation (r=~+0.20) is a result of cross-assortative mating as both intelligence and height are desirable attributes in Western society.

There is no within-family correlation between height and intelligence.

see Jensen's 'The g Factor' (page 146) for a more detailed explanation.

We should be ashamed of ourselves. This discussion is nothing more than the abstraction of height as a single entity, its quantification as one number for each individual, and the use of these numbers to rank people in a single series of worthiness, invariably to find that oppressed and disadvantaged groups —races, classes, or sexes— are innately inferior and deserve their status.