American having a change of Height?

Ok, I’m back, we decided to go to a grocery that was a block away get something then chill and people watch by the coliseum. It was certainly cheaper than getting something from those conartist-cum-mobile-quickie-marts vendors or buying from the restaurants around there, and it was a smoked salmon sandwich but was not up to the standards that many other Italian eateries have been, oh well.

Anywho, I had an interesting discussion (one of many) with my friend about height differences. About People from places like Tonga and Samoa, the Germans/Dutch, and the Americans. He said he had recently seen somewhere that the average American height has decreased over the past 50 years… why? That he didn’t know, we guessed that is was possibly due to the relatively large (compared to many countries) minority populations (Asians and South Americans, certainly not the African American minority [Thanks for helping bring it back up a bit guys!]) that are in the US, could be. I heard a study that found a positive correlation between standard of living and height, where the lower the average standard of living of a population the lower their average height was, interesting. I can think of exceptions (Japanese being short [albeit short N’ cuddly] and having an insanely high standard of living and Tonga and Samoa not having the best of living standards and pretty much dwarfing most other populations).