The Incredible Shrinking African-American Woman

Black women are losing inches, but not in the way you might think.

They’re getting shorter generation after generation, according to recent data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The CDC’s National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey concluded that black women born in the 1980’s were more than a half an inch shorter than those born in the 1960’s.

Some experts argue that socioeconomic factors are reasons for this disparity.

“Height is a very good overall indicator of how well the human organism thrives in its socioeconomic environment,” said John Komlos, an economist and historian quoted in a Chicago Tribune article about the height gap.

One interesting finding is that black women who have more dough in their wallets also have a few inches on lower and middle-income black women.

“While the heights of low- and middle-income black women are plummeting, upper-income black women are growing taller and rapidly closing the gap with their white counterparts,” according to the study.

Taller and richer? Life is so unfair.