It does not appear they controlled for ethnicity, race or any other measure of genetic stock. Doing so is important in my view. For example, the oft-cited average US male height 5'9 or 5'10", but for white American men it's more like 5'11"
In Western countries, yes.
Country Year Urban Ethnic Makeup Rural Ethnic Makeup
-------------- ----- ----------------------------- ------------------------------
United States 1990 73% White, 14% Black, 8% Hispanic | 86% White, 11% Black, 3% Hispanic
2020 57% White, 12% Black, 18% Hispanic | 84% White, 8% Black, 9% Hispanic
United Kingdom 1991 90% White, 4% South Asian, 2% Black | 97% White, <1% South Asian, <1% Black
2011 75% White, 12% South Asian, 6% Black | 97% White, <1% South Asian, <1% Black
South Africa 1991 14% White, 77% Black, 9% Coloured | 15% White, 68% Black, 17% Coloured
2011 14% White, 79% Black, 8% Coloured | 11% White, 77% Black, 11% Coloured
India 1991 69% Hindu, 14% Muslim, 11% Other | 69% Hindu, 14% Muslim, 13% Other
2011 63% Hindu, 17% Muslim, 11% Other | 68% Hindu, 15% Muslim, 13% Other
China 1990 91% Han, 2% Mongolian, 2% Hui | 89% Han, 5% Zhuang, 1% Miao
2020 92% Han, 1% Zhuang, 1% Hui | 88% Han, 6% Zhuang, 1% Miao
Peru 1993 53% Mestizo, 31% Indigenous, 16% White| 73% Indigenous, 23% Mestizo, 4% White
2017 60% Mestizo, 16% Indigenous, 24% White| 74% Indigenous, 21% Mestizo, 4% White> The total 2020 enumerated population of all [331] cities over 100,000 is 96,598,047, representing 29.14% of the United States population (excluding territories)
From: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities...
So, for instance, Greater Los Angeles has more than 18 million people by itself, where your source lists it as under 4 million.
Here are the sources-
US: US Census Bureau
UK: Office for National Statistics
South Africa: Statistics South Africa
India: Census of India
China: National Bureau of Statistics of China
Peru: National Institute of Statistics and InformaticsThe best one that I can think of is the fact that rural children probably spend more time outside engaging in physical activity. Even in the US, I know of high schools where a substantial number of the students are working full-time jobs outside during the summer, in addition to doing outdoors sports and other activities during the school year.
Perhaps tall people are more likely to find work in rural areas and short people's skills are more likely to align with urban environments.
I still wonder if there is something else going on. But feel like instead of a survey of 200 countries it would be more interesting to just focus on one country with a more homogenous genetic population and measure lots of different possibel variables
I think the point is that looking at 200 countries makes the possibility of confounding factors much lower
I've done splicing work for several farming co-ops out west that ran fiber to the homestead. Small town of like 200 has GPON to most houses.
The only places I feel have been homogeneous with their rural areas surrounding them, have been some of nordic places like Copenhagen, Oslo, Stockholm and Tallinn.
1 - https://ggwash.org/view/6497/maps-show-racial-divides-in-gre...
Yes, but are they all ethnically skewed in the same way? If the concern is genetic factors, it doesn't really matter if cities have different ethnic demographics than rural areas in all two hundred countries as long as the rural/urban racial skew is different in the different countries.
For example, in the US rural areas may tend to be whiter than urban areas, but in countries that aren't predominantly caucasian, the opposite may be true.
But Tulsa, OK vs the surrounding non-metro counties? I'm less certain without diving into the data.
The median US city size is Naperville, IL at 149,104 people.[0]
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_b...
Naperville is a suburb of Chicago, and without looking I can confidently tell you that it's more white than Chicago, but less white than a nearby rural area. I will look though: https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/chicagocityilli...
Cities in mostly ethnically homogeneous states tend to still have things of value that might draw people of diverse ethnic backgrounds. I'm in Nashville Tennessee and there are far more people of Asian or middle Eastern descent here in the city than there are in the surrounding rural areas, due to the universities and the job opportunities which draw people from out of state.
But if by “a priori” you mean something innate in humans or mathematical, I think you’ll be hard pressed to find that. Or what that really means in this context.
A priori = Beforehand, or before analysis performed. Standard phrasing in research, defines reasonable hypotheses to test.
For example, most americans have a-priori knowledge that rural americans are demographically whiter than urban americans, and could hypothesize global trends.
If that counts as an a priori reason - I’ll take it. In summary: “A priori” is ambiguous here / not a very useful modifier afaict.
Or are you suggesting that non-genetic cultural factors could be at play here too? Possibly!
If whatever you wanted to say agrees with this, I agree with it; if it disagrees, I disagree with it.
I don't see cultures mentioned anywhere in the article or the comment you replied to.
If mean that there are no differences in the genes that determine height across populations, that is incorrect. For example, the average male height in Pygmy populations is 5 feet, or about 7 inches lower than Cameroon's Bantu populations who live alongside Pygmies. We know there are genetic differences between Pygmy and Bantu populations that are specifically associated with height, and that average Pygmy height increases along with the percentage of Bantu ancestry (https://journals.plos.org/plosgenetics/article/info%3Adoi%2F...). Similarly, differences in height across European populations have been demonstrated to be partly due to differences in the hundreds of genes associated with height (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3480734/).
One group in all of humanity happened to have measurable differences in genes affecting height?
How does that explain the many other distinct "Pygmy" groups entirely separate from those in West Africa, such as those in the Philippines, who have genetic differences in growth hormones that cause them to be shorter (https://doi.org/10.1515/JPEM.2002.15.3.269)? "Pygmy" simply refers to one of these many groups, they are genetically and geographically distinct.
Pygmy groups show how absurd the claim that there are no differences in height is, but the same kind of variation has been shown within European groups on a smaller scale (consistent with the greater genetic diversity in Africa than Europe). We know that similar differences in genes that influence height exist, to a less extreme degree, across all populations. For example, males in both the Tutsi and Dinka ethnic groups average nearly 6' tall, despite living in areas where malnutrition is/was widespread and alongside other groups that are much shorter on average.
I'm genuinely curious where you got the idea that there are no genetic differences affecting height between ethnic groups/countries. Researchers have identified genetic markers responsible for the majority of variation in human height among Europeans (https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/588020v1), and shown that those markers vary significantly across European groups just as they do in Africa (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3480734/).
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-03622-z
https://www.nature.com/articles/136736a0
https://www.imperial.ac.uk/news/193488/race-science-about-bi...
https://www.nature.com/articles/153604a0
https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674660038
https://sitn.hms.harvard.edu/flash/2017/science-genetics-res...
https://medlineplus.gov/genetics/understanding/traits/height...
https://www.jstor.org/stable/3180830
Every single variation in "genetic trends" amongst cultures is negligible and otherwise entirely attributable to environmental factors.
The source of the ideas you're asserting as fact are very dark and extremely thoroughly debunked at this point. Honestly it's kind of shameful to present these 1920s ideas as modern.
Individually yes, genetics contribute to height, but the full range of height genetics exist in every culture.
"The full range of incomes exist in every country, therefore differences in average incomes across countries must be negligible."
You've linked a long list of articles talking about race in America and Brazil, none of which I can see claim that there are no differences in genetic height by ethnic group. One is a book from 1944 that rightly rejects racially discriminatory policies and argues "that experience rather than inborn traits determines standards of social conduct." What part of that supports the idea that the 6' Tutsis or Croats are genetically predisposed to the same height as the Taron who average 4'3?
The MedlinePlus article you linked explicitly says "in some cases, ethnicity plays a role in adult height."
"Race" categories as described by all of your links that I saw ("black"/"white") are crude aggregations of hundreds of ethnic groups. Tutsis and Pygmies are both "African," but at the opposite extremes of human height. Framing the genetics of height in terms of American racial politics makes no sense.
>The source of the ideas you're asserting as fact are very dark and extremely thoroughly debunked at this point. Honestly it's kind of shameful to present these 1920s ideas as modern.
The "source of the ideas" are the peer-reviewed journals of PLoS Genet and Nature Genetics based on landmark genetic research published in 2012 and 2020. As in hundreds of other peer reviewed studies that have identified genetic markers responsible for height and how those markers vary across populations, including articles you yourself linked without apparently reading.
>Every single variation in "genetic trends" amongst cultures is negligible and otherwise entirely attributable to environmental factors.
Is the vastly higher rate of sickle cell anemia among people of West African descent is either "negligible and otherwise entirely attributable to environmental factors"? Is it simply Europeans' "environment" that causes them to go bald and get skin cancer at rates dozens of times higher than people of East Asian descent growing up in the same countries?
So no, you have not linked any peer-reviewed study saying what you claim.