Average BMI by country

186 countries, ranked by the average of men and women

"Est. obese" is the share with BMI 30 or more, estimated from each country's mean and SD with a normal curve. Globally that estimate is 16% of men and 20% of women. Click a country for the full WHO category breakdown.

How to read this

BMI is weight in kilograms divided by height in metres squared. The WHO bands are: under 18.5 underweight, 18.5 to 25 healthy weight, 25 to 30 overweight, 30 and over obese. Means here are age-standardised figures for adults in 2016 from the NCD Risk Factor Collaboration (NCD-RisC). Their newer releases publish the share in each BMI band but not the mean, so 2016 is the latest mean available.

We rank by the average of the men's and women's means because the two can disagree sharply. In South Africa the gap between women and men is more than four BMI points.

The category shares are estimates. We assume BMI follows a normal distribution with the stated mean and SD. Real BMI distributions have a longer right tail, so our obesity shares run a little low in high-BMI countries and the underweight shares a little low in low-BMI countries. Treat them as within a few points of the surveyed figures. NCD-RisC does not publish SDs. SD for countries added in 2026-10 uses the global SD.

Questions

Which country has the highest average BMI?

Samoa, in our set: men average 30.6, women 34.3. Tonga and Kiribati follow. We cover 186 countries; in NCD-RisC's full list the Pacific island states (Nauru, Tonga, Samoa) have the highest means of all, above 30.

Which country has the lowest average BMI?

Ethiopia, with men at 20.1 and women at 21.1. Eritrea and Madagascar are close behind. Low national means usually combine a slim majority with a meaningful share of underweight adults, so a low average is not the same as a healthy one.

Why do average BMIs differ so much between countries?

Diet, income, urbanisation and how much people walk. Mean BMI rose in nearly every country between 1975 and 2016, but fastest where cheap processed food arrived quickly. Genetics matter less than for height; the same population can shift a full BMI point in a decade. Note also that BMI is a blunt tool: it says nothing about where fat sits, and the WHO cut-offs were set on European data, so the same BMI carries more health risk in South and East Asian populations.