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People are getting taller

As I suspected I'm a good 12cm shorter than the average Dutch woman. Some years ago a BBC television news report stated that the Dutch were officially the tallest European ethnic group. I looked down, muttered "No, the ground's still very close", and turn off the telly. Curse my short little ancestors!

The question is when do we really start to notice how short/tall we are vs the average is there a height at which we notice it. if the avg height is say 5' 10" (~177cm) for men do we say classify as +/- 2" (~5cm) as being in the average range and everyone above/below that as being tall/short?
 
I was in the slightly unusual position of being tall for my age until I was about 9, and then I stopped growing when I was 11. In the meantime the bulk of my age peers kept growing, of course, so I was very conscious of everyone literally growing around me. By the time I was 15 I was the second shortest person in a school with 650 pupils. Trust me, you take notice. ;)
 
It can also depend on the ethnic background of the people around you. The high school I mentioned above was mostly WASP, but when I changed to a Catholic high school populated mostly by students of southern Italian decent there were many more classmates who were on the short side as well, and while I was still shorter than most of my classmates the actual difference in height was no longer as obvious and several other pupils were shorter than me.
 
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