The correlation between a man's age and the height of his waistband

This phenomenon was pointed out to me a decade ago, and it is certainly borne out by observation. My own explanation is that it has to do with where your beer-gut is: at age twenty, you don't have one; at age forty, your beer gut is still quite high up, so you push your waistband down beneath it for comfort; once the beer gut starts to sag it's actually more comfortable to have your waistband resting on top of it. Factor in this ludicrous fashion among young people to have their waistband roughly at knee level, and there you have it.

A good summary appeared in today's Metro:

New research shows that from the age of 39 men's trousers rise inexorably towards their armpits.

By the age of 45 their trousers are at least 5cm (2in) above their natural waist position and still on the rise. And by the time a man reaches 57 his waistband peaks as high as 12.5cm (5in) above its natural level. In contrast, boys wear their trousers around their natural waist (the thinnest part of the body between the rib cage and the hips) until the age of 12.

The waistband then falls below the top of the pants by the age of 16 as teenage rebellion creeps in but rises as they start work.The survey of 1,000 men and their trouser wearing habits was conducted by department store chain Debenhams. Its director of menswear buying, Paul Baldwin, said: "Men still prefer to assume that their trousers no longer fit because their legs have suddenly grown. A man's waistband can be a metaphor for his life."