No. But, to my mind, it's a natural outgrowth of PCs being "special backstory characters" and the fact that the PC building rules for races have no control over depiction of those races for NPCs.
It's simply obvious (again, to me) that a bog-standard halfling NPC would have a 6-7 Strength, whereas your average orc NPC is probably a 13-14. It's a required function of the DM to model the capabilities of displayed NPCs with appropriate mechanics. You don't need PC building rules to tell you the average halfling can't bench what the average orc does.