Are Tall Men More Successful?

Are Tall Men More Successful?

There’s a persistent ‘interesting fact’ that tall men are more successful than short men. Which, as a short man, can be quite dispiriting.

But only a bit.

I’m totally ready to accept it might be true. It’s just an average, after all. Just because tall men are more successful than short men, doesn’t mean short men are all unsuccessful.

The thing is, after doing a bit of research, I’m not sure any of it is true.

The data is pretty questionable. And some it actually undermines the idea that height is a cause of success or increased income. 

The idea that tall men are more successful is flawed. Let me explain.

Are CEOs taller than average?

Success has many forms. But it’s hard to argue that being the CEO of a major company is anything other than success. If you ran Apple, your mum and dad would probably be proud.

This is where the 'fact' that tall men are more successful really began.

In his book, Blink, Malcolm Gladwell claims that American CEOs are 4 times as likely to be over 6 foot than the average population. And because lots of people read Malcolm Gladwell books, the fact stuck.

blink by malcolm gladwell

Unfortunately, it’s just not a fact. It’s not a real survey. You can’t find the dataset anywhere. CEOs don’t all publicly list their height, like racehorses. We just can’t rely on this data.

Ok, fine. But is there anywhere we can find good data?

Enter… the Swedish military. 

The best data about the height of business leaders comes from a Swedish study in 2017. No other study comes close, and there’s a good reason for that. 

Sweden used to have national service. As part of this, the height of every male in Sweden was collected in a database. This being Sweden, that database was made public, meaning researchers Renée Adams, Matti Keloharju, and Samuli Knüpfer could cross-reference it with business records.

So what did they find? 

  • Very large companies have tall leaders, 4.4cm taller than average

  • Other companies have tallish leaders, but only by 1.2-2.5cm above average

  • The bigger the company, the higher the education level of the leader

In other words, for the vast majority of companies, leaders are only marginally taller than the average person. The argument that height equals success is not overwhelming.


The exception to this is in very large companies. This supports Gladwell, who was only looking at the top 500 in the US. The CEOs of the biggest companies are tall. 

However, there are a couple of considerations here. 

Firstly, these people are truly elite. There are more Premier League footballers than CEOs of top 500 companies. Measuring success against them is utterly foolhardy.

Secondly, there’s another, more thorny problem…

Why do tall men earn more?

What is true is that height correlates with income. According to Judge & Cable (2004) in the Journal of Applied Psychology, every additional inch of height correlates with roughly $789 more in annual earnings.

(please note, this is an average, your boss will not give you a raise if you stand on tippy toes)

There are two main theories why tall men tend to earn more:

  • Tall men are more confident, because they tended to be more popular during adolescence

  • Tall men are ‘looked up to’ by people on a fundamental level, our chimp brains see them as leaders because they’re big

There’s almost certainly something in both of those. However, there is another factor that these theories entirely ignore.

Height does correlates with income, but income also correlates with your family wealth. In other words, if you grew up rich, you’ll likely earn more. And, if you grew up rich, you’ll probably be taller too, due to better healthcare and nutrition.

In other words, wealth has created height, not the other way around.

There’s some good evidence for this, when you look at different countries.


There’s a clear correlation between wealth and height. It’s strong. Yet no-one would look at this graph and say ‘if Bangladeshis were taller, they’d be richer’. 

No, if they were richer, they’d be taller.

This is why I’m skeptical of the tall CEO argument. CEOs often come from very privileged backgrounds, and are likely to be taller than average anyway. 

And this is exactly what a European wide study found in 2020. Once you account for background and job type, the height effect effectively disappears, for men at least.

The results indicate a statistically significant effect whereby women are 0.15 percentage points more likely to be in a leadership position for each additional centimetre of absolute height when controlling for education and occupational position, whereas there is no effect for men.

So are tall men more successful? On average, yes. But the real effect is very small, and most of the difference you can see is explained by family background and upbringing, rather than the simple fact they’re tall.

The top ten CEOs and their heights

I’ve mainly talked about averages and maths so far. So let’s have a palate cleanser and look at some real CEOs.

These are the men who lead the top 10 companies by market cap, as of August 2025.

  1. Nvidia - Jensen Huang - 5’7
  2. Microsoft - Satya Nadella - 6’0
  3. Apple - Tim Cook - 6’2
  4. Alphabet - Sundar Pichai - 5’11
  5. Amazon - Andy Jassy - 5’10
  6. Meta - Mark Zuckerberg - 5’7
  7. Broadcom - Hock Tan - unknown
  8. TSMC - C.C Wei - unknown
  9. Berkshire Hathaway - Warren Buffet - 5’10
  10. Tesla - Elon Musk - 6’2

Jensen Huang is the CEO of the biggest company on the planet, and is 5 foot 7.

This means that, out of the top 10 CEOs in the world:

  • 2 are short

  • 2 are average height

  • 4 are tall

  • 2 are unknown

It’s hardly a crushing victory for the giants is it?

The top 10 footballers and their heights

When you look at sport, it’s also clear that tall men are not necessarily more successful. And yes, I have deliberately not picked basketball here. And not just because it’s incredibly repetitive.

These are the top 10 in the Ballon d’or last year (2024):

  1. Rodri - 6’3
  2. Vinícius Júnior - 5’9
  3. Jude Bellingham - 6’1
  4. Dani Carvajal - 5’8
  5. Erling Haaland - 6’5
  6. Kylian Mbappé - 5’10
  7. Lautaro Martínez - 5’9
  8. Lamine Yamal - 5’11
  9. Toni Kroos - 6’0
  10. Harry Kane - 6’2

So the heights of the top 10 footballers in the world reveal:

  • 3 are short

  • 1 is average height

  • 6 are tall

A slight bias for height, certainly with strikers. But it’s not obvious.

And let’s remember that Lionel Messi won this competition 8 times and is only 5’7…

Summary: are tall men more successful

Sort of. The idea that tall men are more likely to earn more and be more successful does have some basis in fact. 

But it’s far more complicated than the soundbite would have you believe.

Our business titans tend to be tall. Taller people earn more on average. But people born wealthy tend to be tall, and they tend to earn more, so it’s hard to make a causal link.

On an individual level, there are countless examples of short guys being successful. I mentioned CEOs and footballers, but you could equally add actors (lots of short guys), musicians, whatever field you like. 

Whatever industry you’re in, there are plenty of successful short guys out there. 

It’s just a shame this ‘fact’ has become so deep-rooted, as it can knock your confidence. And, more to the point, the facts don’t back it up.

Jack, Founder of Ruler of London

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