From Iceland — Icelanders Among World's Tallest

Icelanders Among World’s Tallest

Published May 6, 2009

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development issued a
survey which ranks Icelanders as among the world’s tallest people. According to the report, Icelandic men are actually third, behind Dutch and Danes, in terms of median height, but Icelandic women are the world’s tallest women.
The OECD average height for men and women is 177cm and 164cm respectively. Icelandic men and women are, on average, 180cm and 167cm respectively. Mexicans are the shortest, for both men and women, averaging 166cm and 154cm respectively.
Other factoids brought up in the survey include:
~ Icelandic men have the longest average lifespan, at 79,4 years.
~ Icelanders have the longest work week, at 43.9 hours, while Dutch have the shortest; 31.6 hours.
~ Norwegians spend the most time at leisure – over a quarter of their day.
~ The French sleep, on average, about nine hours a day and spend two hours a day eating and drinking. Americans sleep about 8.5 hours a day and eat 1.25 hours per day, yet rank highest in terms of obesity.
~ Koreans and Japanese rank the lowest in terms of obesity and length of their nights’ sleep, at about 7.8 hours. Television also comprises 55% of a Japanese’s spare time, as opposed to 25% for New Zealanders.
~ Turks are the world’s most sociable people, spending 35% of their time entertaining guests, far above the OECD average of 11%.

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