Critically acclaimed Hungarian-American economic historian and distinguished scholar of economic anthropometric history, Prof. John Komlos (Professor Emeritus, University of Munich), who pioneered the study of the history of human height and weight, has published an article titled “The Decline in the Physical Stature of the U.S. Population Parallels the Diminution in the Rate of Increase in Life Expectancy” on October 31, 2025, in the forthcoming issue of Social Science & Medicine (SSM) – Population Health, Volume 32, December 2025.
The findings of the article present a damning critique of the barbaric nature of capitalism and its detrimental impact on human health, highlighting that the average height of Americans began to decline during the era of free-market capitalism. The study draws on an analysis of 17 surveys from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), conducted by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) through its National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS).
NHANES is a nationwide program that collects comprehensive health and nutritional data from both adults and children across the United States. The data reveal the inhumane impacts of capitalism on human health—reflected in reduced height, declining physical well-being, and rising rates of mental health disorders and obesity. Mental health challenges such as anxiety, depression, loneliness, and stress are growing at alarming levels. More than two in five adults now suffer from obesity. The combination of obesity and depression further accelerates health deterioration and related deaths.
Professor Komlos’s article (2025) documents that “despite spending 17% of its GDP on healthcare—twice the per-capita average of other wealthy countries—it is common knowledge that Americans are less healthy and live three to four years shorter lives than their counterparts in other high-income nations.” This 17% of GDP—public money allocated to healthcare—largely flows to private healthcare providers, while a significant portion of workers’ income goes to health insurance companies.
Most strikingly, Professor Komlos’s research (2025) reveals that declines in height ranged from 0.68 ± 0.36 cm among white women to 1.97 ± 0.50 cm among Hispanic men. This decline occurred primarily among birth cohorts from the late 1970s to early 1980s—a period when life expectancy was still rising. That era was marked by the expansion of laissez-faire health systems that promoted the privatization of healthcare, creating a market for health at the expense of public well-being.
Prof. Komlos (2025) argues that “the U.S. healthcare and food-provisioning systems have failed to create an environment in which the human biological organism can flourish. Consequently, key health outcomes, most notably life expectancy, have consistently lagged behind those of other high-income populations since the Reagan era, coinciding with the adoption of economic policies that increased inequality and precarity across the population.”
His research further shows that declining “trends in physical stature—an omnibus indicator of a population's biological well-being reflecting nutritional intake, inequality, stress, and overall health conditions—mirror these systemic failures.” He concludes that “the height of Americans began to decline among those born around or before the early 1980s, in parallel with the slowdown in life expectancy gains. The decline in adult height ranged from 0.68 ± 0.36 cm among white women to 1.97 ± 0.50 cm among Hispanic men and is statistically significant across all six demographic groups considered. This decline in height serves as corroborating evidence that the U.S.’s laissez-faire approach to healthcare and food provisioning delivers suboptimal population health outcomes. Public health priorities urgently need to be refocused.”
However, the market-led democracy in the United States remains structured to serve capital rather than people or the planet. Individuals work under alienating conditions, while private corporations reap record profits.
Alienation is not natural. Illness is not created by individuals but by the unhealthy living conditions produced within the capitalist system—one that individualizes pleasure and pain, atomizes life, dismantles families and communities, and commodifies relationships not only between people but also between individuals and their own selves. This system has reached a stage of structural pandemic in capitalist societies such as the United States, where the business of illness has become normalized—serving pharmaceutical industries, private hospitals, medical corporations, and insurance companies at the expense of public health.
Professor Komlos (2025) traces the roots of today’s public health crisis, arguing that “U.S. life expectancy—an omnibus indicator of biological well-being—began to lag behind that of peer countries in 1983, coinciding with major ideological and policy shifts that prioritized market solutions to social problems over government-provided social services and increased both inequality and the level of stress experienced by the population.” This ideological shift—from public good to private profit—has fostered a predatory and vulturous form of capitalism that has produced rising unemployment, poverty, and illness.
On September 9, 2025, the United States Census Bureau reported that 35.9 million people were living in poverty in 2024. However, the Bureau has since been unable to update its data and website due to a lapse in federal funding—a convenient strategy to obscure the failures of the capitalist American state. Homelessness increased by 18% in 2024 compared to 2023, according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
In a related move, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) abruptly cancelled its annual report on hunger in America—an apparent attempt to conceal the government’s inability to tackle food insecurity. As a result of federal funding cuts, nearly 42 million additional Americans are projected to face hunger. The country is now confronting widespread food insecurity, driven by rising prices of food, housing, and essential goods.
The State of Mental Health in America 2025 report highlights a mental health crisis at epidemic levels. Death, destitution, poverty, unemployment, hunger, and homelessness are the direct outcomes of American capitalism. Yet, the cheerleaders of capitalism continue to hide its barbaric and inhuman nature, promoting it as a symbol of peace, prosperity, freedom, and democracy—all packaged under the illusion of the “American Dream.”
It is time to move away from capitalism—for the sake of human health and the survival of both people and planet.
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*Academic based in UK
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