The Monthly Bulletin of the Institute for Social Science Senshu University No.706, April, 2022

doi.org/10.34360/00012781

Plateauing of Children’s Height in Japan andSouth Korea―Unhealthy Eating Habits
Hiroshi Mori*
Abstract
When discussing the determinants of height, most studies have tried to identify changes infood consumption, particularly animal protein, in terms of simple per capita averages of
population, without explicit attention on age/cohort identification of children in growing ages.
In modern societies, where generational effects are more prevalent in individual foodconsumption, greater efforts to identify changes in individual consumption by age/cohort in
the populations are crucial. Such analysis shows that younger generations have turned awayfrom fruit in recent decades in Japan, while the older generations in their 50s to 60s still eat
reasonable amounts of fresh fruit today. In order to determine major correlates of children’sheight in food consumption, either cross-sectionally or over time, explicit efforts are required
to determine changes in per capita food consumption by children, as distinct from mere percapita consumption of the full population. Family Income and Expenditure Surveys by Japan’s
Statistics Agency started to provide data classified by age groups of household head (HH) in
the 1970s. One can estimate per capita consumption of selected products by household
members by age, with statistical precision. Statistics Korea followed suit. The author
statistically refined the statement, “steering away from fruit by the young” used in theJapanese government White Paper on Agriculture, 1994, to surmise that radical reduction in
fruit consumption by Japanese children in the 1980s-90s should be responsible for theplateauing of children’s height in the 1990s. Children in South Korea started to reduce
consumption of vegetables appreciably in the early 1990s and further continued this tendency
to eat only about 10% of vegetables eaten by the middle aged adults in their 50s in the end of
the 2010s. Children in Korea grew much faster than their Japanese peers to outgrow them by
3.0 cm in the early 2000s and then ceased to grow any taller. The drastic reduction ofvegetables by the young should have something to do with the cessation of height growth, inthe midst of economic expansion in South Korea.
Keywords: Height, Children, Japan, South Korea, Fruit/Vegetables, Cohort Effects*

e-mail: hymori@isc.senshu-u.ac.jp

Introduction
In the past half century, children in Japan and South Korea grew rapidly in height, as their living
standards steadily improved, with South Korea two decades behind Japan due to the Korean War(1950-53). Children in Japan plateaued in height in the early-1990s, whereas Korean peers kept growing
taller to overtake Japanese by 3.0 cm in mean height in the mid-2000s and then stopped growing any－ 1 －taller, while the economy prospered and consumption of animal protein kept increasing (Japanese
government and Republic of Korea, School Health Surveys).
One common assumption is that the two nations have attained or depleted gene potential in height,(Kopczynski, 2016, p.56).
Asians are distinctly different from Caucasians, particularly in respect of head structure, hair color, eyecolor, etc. If populations in South and North Korea are “identical in gene potential” (ibid. p.57), the 3 cm
differences in mean height, observed between South Korea and Japan in the 2000s, should not be
attributed to “the Koreans’ higher gene potential” (ibid. p. 57). Based on the objective school healthsurvey of Korean School, Osaka, Japan, Kim, Y.S. concludes that Korean children born and raised inJapan proved statistically not bigger in stature than Japanese school children in the neighborhood,
although they were distinctly taller and heavier than their peers in South Korea at the same time,reflecting differences in standard of living (Annals of Human Biology, 9, No. 5, 1982).
Until 7 years ago, when the author began involved in bio-economic investigation of human stature, he
had been a simple believer that Seiyojin, Westerners, are tall in height, while Orientals are short, basedon his personal shock to meet a group of US GIs soon after the war.
He learned that people in Northern Europe, widely conceived taller than those in Southern Europe, were165+ cm tall in mean height (conscripts) some 100 years ago. As shown in Fig. 1, the Dutch, currently
the world tallest (Mori, 2022, FNS), were 165 cm in mean height, the same as the French in 1870 (1850birth cohort), and 4 cm shorter than Norwegians. In 1940 (1920 birth cohort), Norwegians were still 4
Fig. 1 Changes in mean height of young men (age 20), France, Netherlands, Norway and Portugal,
by Birth Year, 1830 to 1980

185

NorwayNetherl

FrancePortugal

180(men age 20 in cm)

175

Sources: U
Tubingen

170

165

160

155
1830

1850

1870

1900

1920

(year of birth)

－ 2 －

1940

1960

1980

cm taller than the Dutch but the differences were reversed in the latter half of the 20th century, i.e., theDutch were 4 cm taller than the Norwegians. The “gene potential approach” should not be applied
without sufficient anthropological evidence (Tubingen University).
Based on the quantitative analyses of Family Income and Expenditure Surveys, classified by age groupsof household head (HH) by the Bureau of Statistics, Japanese government, diary-type surveys of 8,000
households across the nation, in 6 months rotation, the author estimated age/cohort tables of major foodgroups, rice, fish, meat, vegetables, fruit (minor product groups such as beef, pork, --, apples, oranges, asnecessary) since the early 1970s (Mori ed., 2001). To fortify the argument of wakamono no
kudamono-banare (steering away from fruit by the Japanese young) in Japan, White Paper on
Agriculture, 1994, Japanese government, the author and his colleagues engaged themselves in detailed
analyses of secular changes in at-home consumption of fruit and vegetables by household members by
age groups, including infants. The summary tables of fruit and vegetables from the early 1970s to 2010
are transcribed in Tables 1-2.
Tanaka and the author, 2003, predicted at-home fruit consumption in 2010, 10 years ahead, based on
their cohort analyses of FIES data from 1980 to 1999. Mori and Stewart, 2013, examined how close
Table 1 Changes in per capita at-home consumption of fresh fruit by age groups, 1971 to 2010 in Japan(kg/year)age/year

1971

1980

1985-86

1990

1995-962000

0~9 yo

36.3

26.5

15.2

8.9

4.7

2.3

2010
2.4

10~19

45.6

30.5

20.1

14.9

9.4

5.7

4.4

20~29

48.3

31.5

23.4

16.8

15.1

11.8

9.8

30~39

46.1

43.8

36.6

30.4

23.6

21.8

14.8

40~49

51.0

52.6

48.5

44.9

37.2

33.4

20.5

50~59

54.4

59.9

56.6

54.0

50.5

48.5

32.1

60~69

44.5

58.5

61.1

62.0

58.7

60.7

53.3

70+

41.2

54.2

59.6

60.3

62.1

65.8

58.8

Sources: derived from FIES by the author, using the TMI model.
Notes: Estimated by 5 year-age intervals first, which were simply averaged into 10 year-age intervals.

Table 2 Changes in per capita at-home consumption of fresh vegetables by age groups, 1971 to2010 in Japan(kg/year)age/year

1971

1980

1985-86

1990

1995-962000

0~9 yo

44.8

33.7

27.3

23.0

20.2

18.3

17.5

10~19

62.2

51.1

44.7

38.8

36.0

30.0

30.6

20~29

67.8

56.1

52.5

45.5

46.2

40.8

37.6

30~39

68.5

65.6

60.2

54.3

52.3

49.8

45.7

40~49

77.4

80.3

78.2

71.8

67.3

62.0

54.7

50~-59

89.0

90.5

91.9

84.0

83.7

82.3

66.2

60~69

87.5

93.3

99.0

91.2

91.0

94.0

80.8

70+

71.0

80.0

89.4

80.1

81.3

86.9

81.5

Sources: The same as Table 1.

－ 3 －

2010

Tanaka’s predictions have turned out, analyzing FIES data, 2000 to 2010, published in 2011-12. Moriand Stewart discovered that the cohort analysis proved very efficient in predicting future consumption, a
decade or two ahead, with economic variables set-aside.
Mori hypothesized that the plateauing of Japanese children’s height in the early-1990s could have beencaused by the radical reduction in per capita consumption of fruit and vegetables by children in growing
ages, which started in the mid-1970s. Per capita consumption of fruit has been increasing steadily inSouth Korea over the corresponding period and per capita consumption of vegetables has been
considerably larger in Korea than in Japan (Lee, Duffey and Popkin, 2012; Mori, 2018, 2019). The
author was tempted to suspect that South Koreans may have “depleted in reserves height gene potential”(Kopczynski, p. 57), when children in Korea ceased to grow taller in the mid-2000s.
Steering away from vegetables by the young in Korea
As briefly mentioned earlier, children in South Korea grew very fast in height, while their Japanesepeers plateaued in the early-1990s. However, Korean children abruptly stopped growing any taller in the
mid-2000s and seem to be shrinking slightly in the end of the 2010s (Mori, Cole, and Kim, 2021; Mori,
2022). Mori decomposed Household Income and Expenditure Surveys, classified by HH age groups,
Statistics Korea, 1990 to 2019, furnished by Kim, Sanghyo, to discover that the young, particularly
children in growing ages started to turn away from vegetables in at-home consumption in the early
1990s or maybe a little earlier1 and consumed only 10% of vegetables eaten by the older cohorts in their
50s to 60s in the end of the 2020s (Table 3). Table 4 presents the results of age/ period/ cohort
decomposition of Table 3 (age 0-9 group excluded), standard cohort table of household vegetable
expenditures in 2010 constant Wons (≒consumption), which clearly demonstrates radically declining
cohort effects in vegetable consumption in South Korea.
Table 3 Changes in per capita household expenditures on vegetable in Korea, 1990-2019(in 2010 Wons)
1990-91

1994-95

1999-00

2004-05

2009-10

2014-15

0~9

15390

11021

8430

4776

2842

2701

1658

10~14

19357

14628

11055

6289

3920

3422

2154

15~19

18857

14565

11026

7017

4502

3640

2637

20~24

18006

14848

10702

7966

5090

4269

3427

25~29

22707

19571

12339

10148

6709

6473

5425

30~34

24865

23465

13498

12524

9113

9703

8316

35~39

28588

27873

16168

14875

11827

11458

10666

40~44

32685

32067

21491

17538

14538

14246

13045

45~49

35340

35472

24298

20287

17438

16421

15843

50~54

35621

38062

26779

22859

19977

19271

19203

55~59

35645

40027

29460

25112

23163

22726

22733

60~64

37251

39646

31324

26487

25949

25833

27090

65~

30076

32696

28586

23835

25233

24744

27592

Sources: Derived from Household Expenditure Surveys, classified by HH age groups,
by the author, using the TMI model.

－ 4 －2018-19

Table 4 Changes in individual household expenditures on vegetable decomposed into age, periodand (birth) cohort effects, South Korea, by Bayesian Estimator (in 2010 won/month)
Grand Mean Effects=19484 (9.9)
ageageeffects

t values

10~14
15~19
20~24
25~29
30~34
35~39
40~44

-5137
-5670
-6019
-4386
-2797
-1025
1150

-3.1
-4.0
-5.2
-4.9
-4.2
-2.0
2.2

45~49
50~54
55~59
60~64
65~69

2738
4043
5549
6910
4646

4.1
4.5
4.8
4.9
0.8

year
1990~91
1994~95
1999~00
2004~05
2009~10
2014~152018~19

periodeffects

t values

7218
6986
-273
-2794
-4287
-3689
-2981

7.6
10.0
-0.6
-7.4
-8.9
-5.3
-3.1

ΣPt = 0

ΣAi = 0Sources: Table 3, standard cohort table, was decomposed into age/ period/
cohort effects by the author, using Nakamura's Bayesian cohort model.

borncohorteffects

t values~1921
1925~291930~34
1935~39
1940~44
1945~49
1950~54

1580
3556
5416
6060
6144
5287
4326

0.6
1.5
2.7
3.5
4.3
4.6
4.8

1955~59
1960~64
1965~69
1970~74
1975~79

2599
704
-903
-1806
-2434

3.8
1.3
-16.1
-2.6
-2.7

1980~84
1985~89
1990~94
1995~99
2000~04
2005~09

-2973
-3390
-4546
-5568
-6613
-7439

-2.6
-2.4
-2.6
-2.8
-2.9
-2.9

ΣCk = 0Notes: estimates for the older andnewer cohorts are not dependable,
due to the fewer observations.

People in Korea are linked to Kimchi, fermented vegetables, in the minds of many people including theauthor. People in Japan pick Tsukemono, pickled vegetables: salted-radish (Takuan), Chinese cabbage,
cucumber, eggplant, when they eat bowls of rice, but they “pick” only a few pieces. On the contrary,people in Korea eat Kimchi with rice. It was inconceivable for the author to imagine Koreans to turnaway from vegetables (≒Kimchi) in diets, young as they are.
Expenditure Surveys, classified by HH ages, Statistics Korea, do not classify grain into rice, bread,
noodles, as is the case of Japan’s FIES but provide “grain-processed”, which should include bread,
noodles and instant ramen. It should be a close approximation to assume that household expenditures on“grain” in recent years may represent mainly those on polished rice. Appendix Table 1 provides
expenditures on grain and grain-processed in ratios classified by HH age groups, 1990 through 2019. In
the early 1990s, the younger households (HH in their 20s) spent 85.5% of total grain expenditures on“grain” and 14.5% on grain-processed, and then in the end of the 2010s, 23.8% on grain and 76.2% on
grain-processed, whereas the older households spent 70% on grain (≒polished rice) in the same time.
These changes may imply that the younger households have drastically decreased purchases of polishedrice to be cooked at home. They consumed mostly rice as main starchy food in the early-1990s butpurchased substantially less polished rice than noodles and bread, “grain-processed”2 in the end of the－ 5 －2010s, whereas the older households kept purchasing larger amount of rice than processed grain, as
compared to the younger households.
Kimchi does not “get along with” bread and hamburgers, as the author was advised by his younger
colleague in Seoul. As predicted by Mori and Stewart (2011) by means of cohort analysis, riceconsumption by the younger generations seems to have decreased radically in the recent few decades inSouth Korea. Accordingly, at least in the author’s intuition, consumption of Kimchi, or vegetables in theform of traditional Kimchi has drastically declined among the newer/younger cohorts. The author is not
an ardent advocate of Kimchi but tends to agree with the view that Fast-Food type diets with slices oftomatoes/onions with burgers and a few slices of BBQ/grilled pork with ramen (Chinese noodle) should
be “less varied” (USA TODAY,), or far from a healthy menu (Antti Kahari, 2020; Gert Stulps, 2021).
1

HIES for the earlier years are currently not available to the author.

2

The author is not certain if Bennto (deep fried pork on rice in box, for example) is included in grain-processed.

Personal Discussions
The author is the youngest son of a big family, born and grew up in an upper-middle class household in
the early 1930s, when per capita daily caloric supply averaged 2,100 kcal/day. The war broke out in
1937 and domestic supply of living necessities began to be scarce. The author first experienced
every-day hunger when he was in the 5th grade of primary school, which got worse year by year until a
few years after the end of the war. When he entered the university (under the old school system), percapita food caloric supply averaged 1,858 kcal/day in 1951 (Table 5). He was free from every day
hunger in the fall of 1952, when anyone could purchase bread or have noodles in soup without
food-ration coupons, although he had to pay money out of his scholarship. He was thin/short, 51 kg/165
cm, as compared to his eldest brother, 70 kg/170 cm. Our father was 65 kg/160 cm.
The author has two sons, who were born in the mid-1960s, when per capita caloric supply was close to2,500 kcal/day but meat and milk were 50 and 90 kcal/day, respectively. Both of them are 175 cm tall,
not appreciably taller than their playmates. Their children include one boy, who was born in the late
1990s, when per capita supply of meat and milk averaged 170 and 140 kcal/day, respectively (Table 5).
He is 181 cm tall and, well-built, maybe because he played baseball in high school. He is a little taller
than his contemporaries but not abnormally tall. He does not eat as much meat and/or milk as people inEurope or America. As his mother cares, he eats reasonable amounts of vegetables and fruit, definitely
much larger amount than ordinary Japanese peers, as demonstrated by my statistics shown earlier.
The author eats lunch at the students’ cafeteria, simply because it is so close to his office. Twenty years
ago, it carried bottled milk and orange juice/drinks, which have disappeared (not due to the COVID). A
half dozen plates of fruit and vegetable salads were on display for the price range of $4-5, which havealso disappeared. When you order “curry and rice”, curry roux contains some onions and it comes with afew pieces of pickles, the only vegetables which you eat for lunch or even for the whole day.
When the author goes to the supermarket for grocery-shopping, he, as a food economist, carefully
watches who buys what. Most supermarkets place the produce department (fruit and vegetables) near theentrance.
－ 6 －Table 5 Changes in per capita Daily Caloric Supply from Selected Foods in Japan, 1930 to1990-99(kcal/day)
Total

Grains

Meats

Fish

Milk

Vegetables

1930-34

2067

1501

6.8

65.2

4.4

50.4

1935-39

2059

1486

8.0

63.6

5.6

50.6

1946

1449

1112

3.0

36.0

4.0

36.0

1947

1695

1390

4.0

37.0

4.0

38.0

1948

1851

1440

4.0

41.0

4.0

40.0

1949

1927

1483

6.0

53.0

7.0

42.0

1950

1945

1527

8.0

71.0

9.0

44.0

1951

1858

1356

11.7

50.6

9.4

68.6

1952

1995

1376

14.8

61.2

13.6

67.7

1953

1933

1323

15.6

57.1

13.6

59.3

1954

1951

1336

16.7

58.7

18.2

58.8

1955

2217

1478

16.8

83.5

19.5

72.9

1957

2270

1511

22.5

91.7

26.1

75.6

1960

2385

1429

42.2

91.8

52.9

91.9

1965

2444

1334

61.6

92.2

69.9

93.0

1970~74

2492

1209

91.3

96.4

83.0

92.2

1975~79

2545

1154

123.3

127.2

97.4

80.7

1980~89

2624

1086

143.5

131.3

112.4

81.2

1990~99

2635

1039

144.4

139.4

133.1

86.3

WARS

Sources: Minister's Secretariat, Basic Statistics on Food Demand, Tokyo, Norin Tokei Kyoukai, 1976. Kayo, N. Basic
Statistics for Japan Agriculture, Tokyo, Norin-Tokei Kyoukai, 1977.

The young shoppers do not stay long in the produce department. The author is not surprised to find at
the check-outs that the young people have no produce, fresh fruit vegetables in their shopping carts. A
few young female shoppers have a bottle or two of vegetable juice but no fresh produce. Simply, young
home-makers in these days do not feed their children either vegetables or fruit in reasonable amounts.
Instead, some of them may procure bottled supplements, as needed.
When the author discovered in published statistics that the young in Korea have drastically reduced
at-home consumption of vegetables, he has become confident that either fresh fruit or vegetables or bothare “essential nutrients” for normal growth of children. Populations consuming larger amounts of animal
protein reach higher average height than countries with less protein consumption (Grasgruber et al.,2014; 2020). However, a high consumption of animal protein alone does not result in increasing bodyheight, if the overall consumption of consumption of calories and other essential nutrients is insufficient(Blum, 2013; Baten and Blum, 2014).
Brief Conclusion
Children grew appreciably taller in height since the mid-1950s, as the standard of living started to
improve beyond the pre-war level in Japan. South Korea followed suit, two decades behind Japan due tothe Korean War (1950-53). Japanese children plateaued in height in all age segments in the 1990s on,－ 7 －whereas children in Korea kept growing steadily fast in height to overtake Japanese peers by 3 cm or
more in the mid-2000s and then ceased to grow any taller.
In both Japan and Korea, per capita consumption of animal protein was increasing, when children
stopped growing taller in mean height. The author discovered one thing in common: insufficientconsumption of “essential nutrients”, fruit/vegetables among the young, children in growing ages inparticular. Japanese children 0~9 and 10~19 in the age bracket consumed only 5 kg/capita of fresh fruit
annually, less than 10% of the volume eaten by the older adults in their 50s-60s in 2000. Likewise,children in South Korea are estimated to start to turn away from vegetables shortly before the 1990s andconsumed only 10% of vegetables eaten by the older generations in their 50-60s in the end of the 2010s.
Cohort effects in food consumption do not easily reveal how they have been formed (Mori and Saegusa,
2010; Okubo et al., 2016). What the researchers are anticipated to share in bio-economics should
include: dependable approaches to identify changes in consumption of various food products by age
groups, in place of mere per capita consumption of the national populations. Our study covers a period
from the 1960s on3.
3

National Nutrition Surveys, Japanese Ministry of Health and Welfare, started to classify intakes of various foodproducts by broad age groups only in 1996. Korea National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, Korean
government, was first published in 1998, followed by the 2nd issue in 2001 and the 3rd one in 2005.

Acknowledgement
John Dyck, formerly Economist, ERS/USDA, edited the manuscript lightly at the author’s request.
The views expressed in the paper represents those of the author. Glancing over the manuscript, “Young
Colleague from Seoul” sent his review: Conventional idea is that Westerners are taller than Asians,
attributing to race and ethnicity. However, average Koreans in the 21st century are taller than Frenchcounterparts a century ago. The myth busted.
Another generally accepted hypothesis puts emphasis on the role of protein. But the theory of growth byprotein do not fully grasp why people ceased to grow any taller in South Korea after certain points intime despite a cornucopia of proteins.
In this context, Professor Mori’s cohort analysis which shows the importance in human growth of fruitand vegetable intakes by children, not simply by total population, can be a paradigm shifting model.

－ 8 －Appendix Table 1 Changes in the ratios of expenditures on "grain" in all grains
including processed grains, household expenditures, S.
Korea, 1990~2019(%)
HH age1990-91

2000-01

2010-112018-19

~24

85.9

74.9

45.5

21.5

25~29

85.0

76.6

42.1

26.2

30~34

84.7

76.0

42.3

33.2

35~39

85.6

75.8

45.9

39.1

40~44

86.0

77.1

47.3

40.6

45~49

86.7

78.8

50.6

44.5

50~54

87.6

81.0

57.7

49.0

55~59

88.3

84.0

63.7

59.0

60~64

89.8

83.3

69.8

64.5

65~

88.4

84.4

74.2

73.6

Sources: Household Income and Expenditures Surveys, various issues.

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