Kids aged five in Britain have come up short against their peers in an international height league.
An expert warned poverty and poor diets linked to Tory austerity policies has led to them being up to seven centimetres smaller than those in comparable nations.
The average five-year-old boy in the UK is 112.5cm (3.69ft) compared to 119.6cm (3.92ft) in the Netherlands, which has the tallest children.
The average British girl is 111.7cm (3.66ft) while her Dutch counterpart is 118.4cm (3.88ft).
In 1985, boys and girls in the UK ranked 69th out of 200 nationalities for average height at the age of five. At the time they were on average 111.4cm (3.65ft) and 111cm (3.64ft) respectively.
British boys are now 102nd and girls 96th, said the Non-Communicable Diseases Risk Factor Collaboration, a global network of health scientists.
Prof Tim Cole, an expert in child growth rates at the Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health, University College London, said: “They’ve fallen by 30 places, which is pretty startling.”
The professor, who was not involved in the most recent study, pointed to illness and infection, stress, poverty, sleep quality and general living conditions.
He added: “It’s quite clear we are falling behind, relative to Europe.
“But it’s telling that at age five, we are looking further behind than we are at age 19, which suggests to me that the last 14 years from age five to 19 has been particularly rough for UK children.
“Which happens to coincide with the period of austerity... and tells me that austerity has clobbered the height of children in the UK”. In France, the average boy aged five is 114.7cm (3.76ft) and the average girl is 113.6cm (3.72ft).
In Germany, they are 114.8cm (3.72ft) and 113.3cm (3.71ft) respectively.
Danish boys are on average 117.4cm (3.85ft) and girls are 118.1cm (3.87ft).
Henry Dimbleby, a former government food adviser, has previously highlighted how diets in deprived areas have led to British kids being shorter on average than those in almost all other high-income countries.
Mr Dimbleby said GPs in poorer areas have reported an extraordinary resurgence of Victorian diseases such as rickets and scurvy, “largely caused by nutritional deficiencies”.
