Humans grow fastest (other than in the womb) as infants and toddlers, rapidly declining from a maximum at birth to roughly age 2, tapering to a slowly declining rate, and then, during the pubertal growth spurt (with an average girl starting her puberty and pubertal growth spurt at 10 years and an average boy starting his puberty and pubertal growth spurt at 12 years), a rapid rise to a second maximum (at around 11–12 years for an average female, and 13–14 years for an average male), followed by a steady decline to zero. The average female growth speed trails off to zero at about 15 or 16 years, whereas the average male curve continues for approximately 3 more years, going to zero at about 18–19. These are also critical periods where stressors such as malnutrition (or even severe child neglect) have the greatest effect. Moreover, the health of a mother throughout her life, especially during her critical period and pregnancy, has a role. A healthier child and adult develops a body that is better able to provide optimal prenatal conditions. The pregnant mothers health is essential for herself but also the fetus as gestation is itself a critical period for an embryo/fetus, though some problems affecting height during this period are resolved by catch-up growth assuming childhood conditions are good. Thus, there is a cumulative generation effect such that nutrition and health over generations influence the height of descendants to vary degrees. The age of the mother also has some influence on her childs height.
Several human studies have found a loss of 0.5 years/centimeter of increased height (1.2 yr/inch). But these findings do not mean that all tall people die young. Many live to advanced ages and some become centenarians.In medicine, height is measured to monitor child development, this is a better indicator of growth than weight in the long term. For older people, excessive height loss is a symptom of osteoporosis. Height is also used to compute indicators like body surface area or body mass index. Height and occupational success
There is a large body of research in psychology, economics, and human biology that has assessed the relationship between several seemingly innocuous physical features (e.g., body height) and occupational success. The correlation between height and success was explored decades ago. Shorter people are considered to have an advantage in certain sports (e.g., gymnastics, race car driving, etc. ), whereas in many other sports taller people have a major advantage. In most occupational fields, body height is not relevant to how well people are able to perform; nonetheless several studies found that success was positively correlated with body height, although there may be other factors such as gender or socioeconomic status that are correlated with height which may account for the difference in success.A demonstration of the height-success association can be found in the realm of politics. In the United States presidential elections, the taller candidate won 22 out of 25 times in the 20th century.