International Journal of Epidemiology, 2014, 835–842
doi: 10.1093/ije/dyt274
Advance Access Publication Date: 22 January 2014
Original article
ANTHROPOMETRIC MEASURES AS MARKERS AND RISK FACTORS
Association of height and violent criminality:
results from a Swedish total population study
Amber L Beckley,1* Ralf Kuja-Halkola,2,3 Lena Lundholm,2,3
Niklas Långström2,3 and Thomas Frisell4
1
Department of Criminology, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden, 2Department of Medical
Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden, 3Swedish Prison and
Probation Services, Research and Development Unit and 4Clinical Epidemiology Unit, Department of
Medicine, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden
*Corresponding author. Department of Criminology, Stockholm University, 106 91 Stockholm, Sweden.
Email: [email protected]
Accepted 12 December 2013
Abstract
Background: Violent criminality is at least moderately heritable, but the mechanisms behind this remain largely unexplained. Height, a highly heritable trait, may be involved but
no study has estimated the effect of height on crime while simultaneously accounting for
important demographic, biological and other heritable confounders.
Methods: We linked nationwide, longitudinal registers for 760 000 men who underwent
mandatory military conscription from 1980 through 1992 in Sweden, to assess the association between height and being convicted of a violent crime. We used Cox proportional
hazard modelling and controlled for three types of potential confounders: physical characteristics, childhood demographics and general cognitive ability (intelligence).
Results: In unadjusted analyses, height had a moderate negative relationship to violent
crime; the shortest of men were twice as likely to be convicted of a violent crime as the
tallest. However, when simultaneously controlling for all measured confounders, height
was weakly and positively related to violent crime. Intelligence had the individually strongest mitigating effect on the height-crime relationship.
Conclusions: Although shorter stature was associated with increased risk of violent offending, our analyses strongly suggested that this relationship was explained by intelligence and other confounding factors. Hence, it is unlikely that height, a highly heritable
physical characteristic, accounts for much of the unexplained heritability of violent
criminality.
Key words: Violence, body height, stature
C The Author 2014; all rights reserved. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the International Epidemiological Association
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International Journal of Epidemiology, 2014, Vol. 43, No. 3
Key Messages
• Height is unlikely to contribute to risk prediction for violent crime.
• Height is not responsible for a large portion of the unexplained heritability of violent criminality.
• Anthropometric characteristics, childhood demographics, and intelligence do appear to be important in explaining
violent criminality.
Introduction
Adult height is associated with a variety of outcomes, such
as higher education,1 lower suicidality2 and better psychiatric and somatic health.3–6 Yet, the relationship between
height and interpersonal violence remains unclear.Further,
considering the high heritability of height (at least
80%),7–10 it maybe a mediator of the previously detected,
but only partially explained, heritability of violent criminal
offending.11,12 If the genetic factors influencing height
were the same as those influencing crime, we would be one
step closer to determining which genes may be responsible
for violent behaviour. Yet, there are a number of competing hypotheses that could explain any association between
height and crime, having little or nothing to do with the
genetic properties of height. Considering the public health
concern of violent crime,13–15 it is of considerable importance to explore its aetiology to form appropriate intervention strategies.
Early scholars such as Sheldon16 and Lombroso17
argued that height may independently affect crime because
a taller person is more physically capable of inflicting violence, especially upon a relatively short person. This notion, however, contradicts several important empirical
results on relationships between height and other factors
that affect violent criminality.
Many researchers have used height as a measure of
human welfare,18 since shorter adult height may indicate
childhood disadvantage.19,20 Childhood disadvantage, in
turn, usually predicts negative adult outcomes,21 including
a higher propensity for violent criminality, and may confound detected links between adult height and crime.
Along with the high overall heritability of height, some
200 genetic loci have been identified.22 Many of these
genes are likely to affect growth more generally and may
influence adult outcomes through other pathways such as
general cognitive ability or intelligence. Intelligence is associated with adult height,23–25 possibly by its relatively
strong correlation to brain volume.26 Intelligence is also a
relatively strong predictor of adult education1 and income,
and a moderate to strong negative predictor of criminal
behaviour.27–30
Many previous studies on the height-crime relationship
did not simultaneously adjust for confounding from these
factors.31–35 This raises questions about the validity of significant outcomes indicating a positive effect of height.
Nevertheless, height may still be a causal risk factor for
crime. Case and Paxson24 addressed height and economic
outcomes in longitudinal samples from the USA and UK.
After childhood cognitive ability was accounted for, the
positive effect of height was attenuated but persisted.
Evidence from Sweden suggested that taller men were
more likely to obtain a higher education than shorter men,
even after adjusting for cognitive ability.1 Some researchers
have suggested that shorter people may face discrimination, which could lead to these results.1,2
We used a large sample of all Swedish men who underwent compulsory military conscription during 1980–92, to
estimate the magnitude and direction of the association of
adult height with violent criminality. By linking nationwide longitudinal registers, we were able to adjust for several potential confounders of the height-crime relationship:
muscular strength and body mass (BMI), childhood sociodemographic factors, and general cognitive ability (intelligence) at 18–19 years of age.
Methods
We linked six of Sweden’s longitudinal, nationwide administrative population registers. We used the Conscription
Register as our sampling frame. Conscription was mandatory for Swedish men until 2007. Estimates from the 1990s
show that over 95% of the young male population participated in conscription; those who did not were typically
excluded because of severe somatic disorders or mental
retardation.36 The Conscription Register provided information on age, weight, height, cognitive performance
and isometric muscle strength. We extracted data for all
men conscripted 1980 through 1992, approximately
760 000 men (born approximately 1959 to 1975). We
excluded those: of 22 years of age or older at conscription;
born outside Sweden; with invalid values on any studied
variables; or with BMI values <15 or >39. With these restrictions the resulting sample was 713 877 men.
We used the Cause of Death and Migration Registers to
track whether subjects were deceased or had migrated, respectively; subjects not appearing in these registers were
International Journal of Epidemiology, 2014, Vol. 43, No. 3
assumed to be able to be convicted of an offence in Sweden. The Cause of Death Register contains information on
all deaths among registered Swedish citizens and residents,
even if they died while abroad. The Migration Register
provides data on all immigration and emigration for registered citizens and residents of Sweden, and birthplace information. The Crime Register supplied information on
the type of crime and offence date for all court convictions
from 1973 to 2009 (less than 0.1% of convictions were
missing personal identification numbers and were thus
excluded from this study). It is estimated that 1% of these
convictions were overturned on appeal.37 In Sweden, the
age of criminal responsibility is 15 years; offences committed before this age are unrecorded. In this register, guilty
convictions comprise all convictions regardless of the reason (e.g. insanity) or the sentencing outcome (e.g. sentences
to forensic psychiatric treatment). Also, plea-bargaining is
not allowed in Sweden.
We used the Multi-Generation Register to link biological and adopted children to their parents. To be included
in the register, parents must have lived in Sweden after
1947, when national personal identification numbers were
introduced. Nearly all of those born in Sweden after 1967
are connected to their parents.37 Using this linkage, we
connected children to their parents’ socioeconomic status
according to the 1970 and 1975 National Censuses.
Outcome
This was defined as the first conviction for a violent crime.
Our definition of violence included homicide, assault,
threatening behaviour, coercion, kidnapping and false
imprisonment, intimidation, robbery and violence and
threats against a peace officer, as well as sexual crimes.
Attempted and aggravated offences were included whenever applicable.
Exposure
The exposure was height measured in standing centimetres.
Confounders
The first set of confounders was additional anthropometric
characteristics of strength and fitness. According to early
criminologists, these features could account for the ability
to commit acts of violence.38,39 Isometric muscle strength
was measured using the IsoKai machine, which primarily
captures leg, back and shoulder strength.40 The original
metric was in newtons, which was then converted into nine
categories, with higher values indicating greater strength.
The body mass index (BMI) simultaneously considers
height and weight (kilograms divided by the squared height
in metres). BMI was used as a fitness measure.
837
The second set of confounders, childhood sociodemographic characteristics, may be seen as confounders of the
height-crime relationship resulting from the link between
height and childhood disadvantage. We included the decile
of taxed income of the head of household from the 1970 or
1975 Censuses (whichever appeared first in the data),
occupation type for the head of household categorized in
10 categories according to Statistics Sweden’s socioeconomic index, a dichotomous variable indicating whether
the head of the household was a single mother, maternal
age at birth, parity of mother and the index man’s number
of maternal full and half-siblings at the end of follow-up.
Third, as a measure of general cognitive ability (intelligence), we used the conscript’s performance on the
compulsory Swedish Enlistment Battery (SEB80). SEB80,
subdivided into sections aimed at capturing different
aspects of cognitive ability, has been shown to better
reflect overall general cognitive ability than individual
aspects of intelligence.41
Analytic strategy
Following descriptive data analysis, we used Cox proportional hazard regression which yields estimates of the relative hazard of violent crime at any given age covered by the
data. The effect of height on violent crime was treated as
linear and analyses were conducted with subjects with
complete information on all variables. No methods for
imputation were used. The unit of time was age in years,
beginning at age 15. Individuals who tentatively entered
the sample after age 15 were excluded due to lack of possible criminal conviction data (left-censoring). All models
were adjusted for birth year to address potential cohort
effects, as some evidence from Norway found a declining
correlation between height and intelligence over time.42,43
All individuals in a given birth cohort were subject to the
same time at risk. The mean time at risk was approximately 27 years across both offenders and non-offenders,
and the oldest individuals were followed until the age of
50. We followed individuals until their first criminal
conviction. When the individual was not convicted, he
was followed until the end of the follow-up period, migration or death. There is a possibility of data inaccuracies as
a result of people not reporting moves abroad. However,
we assumed that emigration and any inaccuracies in that
variable did not bias the results on our key variable,
height.
The first model provided unadjusted associations
between height and violent crime without controlling for
covariates. Models 2–4 considered height along with each
of the three classes of control variables separately. The fifth
and final model included all control variables simultaneously. Finally, we included a sensitivity analysis to test for
838
non-linearity in the height-crime relationship. All models
were estimated using the statistical software R44 and the
survival package.45
Results
Descriptive information is presented in Table 1. On average, convicted violent offenders were about 0.78 centimetres shorter than non-violent men, were slightly weaker
and had marginally higher BMIs. They also experienced
lower parental household income, had parents who were
less likely to be employed in the technical sector and more
likely to be employed in industry and were more likely to
have been raised by a younger and single mother, have a
higher birth order and more siblings. Convicted violent
criminals also had about 1.3 Stanine units lower total IQ;
89% of the sample had complete data on all variables and
were used for remaining analyses (n ¼ 632 965 men). The
Pearson correlation between height and IQ was 0.13 (95%
confidence interval: 0.13–0.14).
Models 1–5 (Table 2) display Cox proportional hazard
modelling results with hazard ratios adjusted to represent
10-cm increments in height. Schoenfeld residuals indicated
that the proportional hazard assumption was not violated
for the height variable. Model 1 indicated a 15% reduction
in the hazard of a violent crime conviction per 10-cm
increase in height. Model 2 included additional anthropometric variables. This model had a significantly improved
fit over the first and showed an 11% reduction in the violent crime hazard per 10-cm increase in height. The third
model included sociodemographic variables and height.
Height remained a significant predictor of violent crime,
and a 10-cm increase was related to a 7% reduction in the
hazard of a violent crime conviction, even lower than
when controlling for the additional anthropometric covariates (Model 2). Model 4 included intelligence and found a
2% decrease in the hazard for violent crime conviction for
each 10-cm increase in height. The fifth, final model considered all covariates simultaneously; the effect estimate
for height changed direction, from negative to positive.
A 10-cm increase in height was now related to a 3%
increase in the hazard of conviction for a violent crime.
The sensitivity analyses showed that the interpretation
of the results did not change when testing for a non-linear
association between height and crime (data not shown; see
full model results of the main analysis as Supplementary
data at IJE online).
Discussion
We linked nationwide, longitudinal registers for all
760 000 men who underwent mandatory military
International Journal of Epidemiology, 2014, Vol. 43, No. 3
conscription in Sweden 1980–92, to test whether increased
height was related to a lower risk of violent criminality. In
initial unadjusted analyses, the shortest men had an almost
doubled risk of violent crime conviction compared with
the tallest men. However, the height-crime relationship
was attenuated when controlling for three groups of potential confounders: anthropometric characteristics, childhood demographics and general cognitive ability. The
effect changed direction, from negative to positive, when
all three categories of covariates were simultaneously
adjusted for. This means that, given two men of different
height but otherwise similar anthropometric characteristics, childhood demographics and general cognitive ability,
the taller of the two is more likely to be convicted of a violent crime.
One possible explanation for the positive link between
height and violent crime conviction when controlling for
covariates is that taller people may be more physically able
to threaten to or actually use interpersonal violence. However, this was contradicted by the observation that muscular strength did not behave similarly to height; the negative
association between strength and violent crime remained
when adjusting for all other covariates. More importantly,
the effect of height is very minimal and the results indicated that the confounders were more important for the
violent crime outcome.
There are some limitations to this study. First, the outcome used was convictions for violent crime, a legal procedure, not acts of violent behaviour. Acts of violence not
handled by the criminal justice system were not captured
in our analysis. Estimates from Sweden’s crime victimization survey suggest that, overall, about 30–40% of all violent criminal behaviours against a person are reported.46
Sexual offences appear to be the least reported (14% in
2009) and aggravated assaults appear to be the most
reported (64% in 2009). We assume that height is randomly distributed throughout unreported acts of violence.
Also, in Sweden, rates and resolution of violent crime are
similar to those of other EU countries.47 The inability to
capture all acts of violence should not affect the reliability
or generalizability of the results.
Second, since we excluded immigrants from this analysis, it is difficult to say whether these results are generalizable to immigrants, especially if they grew up in less
developed countries where height is more likely to be influenced by malnourishment.48 In such cases, the economic
variables may have a stronger mitigating effect on the
height-violent crime association than found here.
Third, there may be problems with the confounders in
the analysis. It is, for instance, likely that our measures of
childhood socioeconomic factors imperfectly captured
early social circumstances due to random measurement
International Journal of Epidemiology, 2014, Vol. 43, No. 3
839
Table 1 Descriptive statistics for all men born 1960–82 in Sweden who underwent mandatory conscription by violent criminal
conviction status
Variable
Convicted of violent crime
Yes
Height (cm)
Muscular strength
Missing
BMI
Parental incomea
Missing
Childhood SESb (%)
Agriculture, forestry (self-employed)
Agriculture, forestry (labourer)
Industry, commerce, transport or service trades (self-employed)
Independent professions: medical doctor, attorney (self-employed)
Director (employed)
Technical, humanitarian, office or commercial trades
Industry or transport
Service trades
Military
Non-identified occupation
Missing
Single mother household (%)
No
Yes
Missing
Maternal age at birth of index persona
Missing
Birth ordera
Missing
Number of maternal siblingsa
Missing
IQ (9-level Stanine score)
Missing
Age at conscription (years) (%)
17
18
19
20
21
Birth year (%)
1959
1960
1961
1962
1963
1964
1965
1966
1967
1968
1969
1970
No
Mean (SD)
N
Mean (SD)
N
178.64 (6.52)
5.72 (1.60)
NA
22.19 (3.05)
5.13 (2.51)
NA
49439
47548
1891
49439
48596
843
179.42 (6.53)
6.18 (1.65)
NA
21.81 (2.82)
6.04 (2.34)
NA
664438
642436
22002
664438
654985
9453
1.74
2.15
5.35
0.40
1.09
24.43
47.07
3.41
0.64
0.13
13.58
859
1064
2647
198
537
12080
23273
1688
314
65
6714
3.70
2.00
4.94
0.64
2.23
37.25
38.97
1.77
0.98
0.08
7.45
24586
13270
32856
4243
14802
247495
258915
11790
6483
513
49485
71.02
28.04
0.94
25.17 (5.55)
NA
2.03 (1.23)
NA
1.99 (1.41)
NA
3.93 (1.72)
NA
35114
13861
464
49406
33
49406
33
49406
33
49223
216
84.02
15.07
0.91
26.69 (5.40)
NA
1.89 (1.07)
NA
1.69 (1.15)
NA
5.24 (1.89)
NA
558262
100108
6068
664054
384
664054
384
664054
384
663051
1387
0.08
84.98
11.76
2.30
0.89
41
42011
5813
1135
439
0.12
86.98
11.81
0.87
0.22
771
577948
78478
5796
1445
0.09
0.04
1.12
8.23
8.46
8.93
8.44
8.08
7.26
6.61
6.53
6.69
45
20
556
4067
4183
4415
4173
3995
3590
3270
3226
3307
0.02
0.01
0.70
6.92
7.41
7.91
7.66
7.68
7.00
6.76
7.04
7.10
116
74
4637
45957
49202
52573
50892
51046
46543
44906
46758
47186
840
International Journal of Epidemiology, 2014, Vol. 43, No. 3
Table 1. (continued)
Variable
Convicted of violent crime
Yes
1971
1972
1973
1974
1975
No
Mean (SD)
N
Mean (SD)
N
6.73
6.27
6.04
6.01
4.46
3326
3102
2987
2972
2205
7.37
7.22
6.97
6.85
5.39
48974
47947
46296
45521
35810
NA, not applicable.
a
Table displays mean values. Categorical values entered into models.
b
Defined as highest occupation of parental head of household in National Censuses 1970 or 1975.
Table 2 Height at conscription (models in 10-cm increments) and hazard ratio(HR) (confidence interval, CI) of violent criminal
convictions among men born 1960–82 in Sweden
HR (95% CI)
Model 1
0.85 (0.84-0.86)
Model 2
0.89 (0.88-0.91)
Model 3
0.93 (0.92-0.94)
Model 4
0.98 (0.96-0.99)
Model 5
1.03 (1.01-1.05)
Adjusted for
–
Additional
anthropometric
variables
Childhood
sociodemographic
variables
Cognitive
ability
Anthropometric,
sociodemographic,
and cognitive ability
error. Without measurement error, the adjusted, positive
association of height and violent crime may have been
slightly stronger. Also, there is the possibility that we have
omitted confounders of the height-crime relationship in
our analysis. Such an omission could have masked a true
negative association.
Fourth, we adjusted for many covariates although
underlying causal associations are not well known. If any
of the potential confounders are actually mediators of the
possible effect of height on violent crime, we introduced
bias by ‘closing’ a causal path, and potentially by creating
spurious associations through common causes of the mediator and violent crime.49 However, since the childhood
demographic variables were measured many years before
the conscription testing, they are unlikely to be potential
mediators. In contrast, intelligence, BMI, muscular
strength and height were measured at the same time point.
We are reluctant to suggest that height has a causal influence on either of the other traits, just as we do not believe
that either of these traits have a causal influence on height.
For instance, if the association between height and intelligence were due to greater brain volume, we should not
consider this an effect of height, but rather a latent growth
factor being a common cause to both traits. By adjusting
for intelligence and the other traits, we hoped to block confounding by such latent factors.
In conclusion, we used population data to evaluate the
relationship between height and criminality. In unadjusted
analyses, height had a moderate negative relationship to
violent crime; the shortest of men born in Sweden were
twice as likely to be convicted of a violent crime as the tallest. This association was attenuated and even reversed by
adjusting for physical or anthropometric characteristics,
childhood demographics and intelligence—which appeared
to have the strongest effect. The adjusted positive association of height and violent crime was significant, but marginal. Hence, height is unlikely to contribute to risk
prediction for violent crime when other known risk factors
are taken into account, and we found no evidence to suggest that height is responsible for more than a negligible
portion of the unexplained heritability of violent criminal
behaviour.
Supplementary Data
Supplementary data are available at IJE online.
Conflict of interest: None declared.
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