It turns out, however, that two generations of living in the West without intermarriage with other communities is enough to make the grandchildren of South Asian immigrants more or less the same height as other ethnicities. So although genetic makeup is certainly important at the individual level, the genetic differences in height between populations are believed to be minimal. If the children of first-generation mothers are still small, it is partly because women who were themselves malnourished in childhood tend to have smaller children.
