Attached Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_height#Average_adult_height_around_the_world

I have found in my travels that the statistical averages strangely match my personal observations... the tallness and head size of individuals does seem to fall within the standard deviation for both stature and head size that I have found in a wide range of anthropometric statistics. Although I have indeed met women who were 3'4" and others who were 6'4" the women I see on a daily basis do seem to fall between 5'4" and 5'7" and although I have known women with exceptionally large heads and exceptionally small heads I myself enjoy creating figures within that narrower range of height and proportions that I see every day...

It is uncommon for me to see women whose legs are longer than thier torsos aside from those who happen to live with me. My wife happens to be six inches taller than me with legs nearly ten inches longer than mine but I am not offended that the default DAZ male figures are taller than the default DAZ female figures... that is what dials are for.... the fact that some men are shorter than some women does not invalidate the artistic choice by DAZ.

For my poser work I most often stick to the convention of men between 5'8" and 6'3"  and women between five two and five eight... I find these figures look better with proportions more statistically average than those found more typically with men of 6'4" and women over six feet. That is just my preference... it reflects the live figure models I used for all my years teaching classical figure and portraiture painting.

There is no harm I think in being interested in these aspects of character design and no particular virtue to sticking with atypical or culturally specific proportions simply because that is how figure come off the rack. Blackhearted has demonstrated quite well what can be done with a closer to average proportion figure like SP3 when one wants an idealized look.

I think understanding the average height and proportions to be as much a legitimate a starting point as just using the DAZ defaults but I have noticed that the discussion of proportions seems to always go badly around here... I do not know why.