📏

Is 5'8 short? 5 foot 8 in cm and how it compares worldwide

Height5 min read · Updated 4 October 2026

5'8" is 172.7 cm (often rounded to 173 cm), or 1.73 m and 68 inches. A 5 foot 8 person is not short by world standards: the average man on Earth is about 171 cm, so 5'8" is slightly above it.

How tall is a 5'8 person compared to the average?

A 5'8" man is taller than about 60% of men worldwide. The picture changes in taller countries: he is taller than about 27% of men in the United States, 23% in the United Kingdom and Canada, and 19% in Australia. So in those countries 5'8" is a little below average, while in South Asia, Southeast Asia and much of Latin America it is above average.

5'8 for a woman

For a woman 5'8" is tall. She is taller than about 98% of women worldwide and about 92% of women in the United States.

Famous people who are about 5'8

How to convert 5'8 to cm

5 feet = 152.4 cm and 8 inches = 20.32 cm. Together that is 172.72 cm.

See 5'8 to scale next to the average man and woman →

Sources

• NCD-RisC — worldwide adult height data
• CDC — body measurements of US adults