LONDON (Reuters Health) - Height matters when it comes to having children, according to a British study showing that shorter women and taller men are likely to have more kids.

Dr. Daniel Nettle, from The Open University, examined data from a survey of 10,000 people born in 1958 and looked at the link between height and number of children in 2000, when they were 42.

Shorter women were more likely to have children, and taller men were less likely to be childless, according to the report published online in the Proceedings of the Royal Society.

Women who were about 4 ft 9 in to 5 ft 1 in tall were slightly more likely to have children than women of average height, which is 5 ft 4 in.

In contrast, men of average height--5 ft 10 in --had fewer children by middle age than men who were 6 ft 1 in tall.

Nettle said the height difference accounted for less than 1% of variation in reproductive success. But repeated generation after generation, it could represent a powerful evolutionary force.

"It seems that tall men and petite women are favored in evolutionary terms, even in a modern population, so the height difference between men and women is unlikely to disappear," he said in a statement.

The difference in reproductive success seems to be because women taller than average and men shorter than average were less likely to find long-term partners.

"We have come to think that men pay attention to physical characteristics of their mates, whilst women pay more attention to status and resources," he said in the statement.

"In the case of height, this is clearly not true; in choosing a husband, size matters."

SOURCE: Proceedings of the Royal Society of London 2002;10.1098/rspb2002.2111.

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