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Beauty and the Labor Market: Accounting for the Additional Effects of Personality and Grooming
Abstract
This paper examines the influence of three non-cognitive personal traits - beauty, personality, and grooming - on the labor market earnings of young adults. It extends the analyses of Hamermesh and Biddle [1994, American Economic Review 84(5): 1174–1194] and others who focus primarily on the effects of beauty on labor market earnings. We find that personality and grooming significantly affect wages, and their inclusion in a model of wage determination reduces somewhat the effects of beauty. We also find some evidence of employer discrimination based on these traits in the setting of wages.
... Hamermesh et al. (2002) studied expenditure on appearances and found that money spent on appearance did slightly increase women's earnings and it did not pay for itself. Robins et al. (2011) found that taking grooming into account helps explain the relationship between attractiveness and income. Wong and Penner (2016) suggest that taking grooming into account explains the relationship between attractiveness and income for women but not for men. ...
... That is, for women, the estimation of attractiveness was contingent on grooming, whereas for men it was not. It has to be noted that Robins et al. (2011) and Wong and Penner (2016) used data for which both attractiveness and extent of grooming were measured by one interviewer. ...
... Could it be that certain men acknowledge that their appearances matter but do not feel the need to enhance their looks, as they already benefit from their looks and thus do not feel a need to enhance their looks by further grooming? As results from previous studies such as ones by Robins et al. (2011) and Wong and Penner (2016) would suggest, women's attractiveness is evaluated on the basis of their level of grooming, whereas the attractiveness of men is evaluated more independently of grooming. ...
... Alongside these traditional drivers of discrimination has emerged a parallel body of research investigating labor market biases that are more difficult, if not impossible, to regulate legally. These include employer prejudices on the basis of, for example, body weight (Levay, 2014;Nickson et al., 2016), clothing and apparel (Ghumman and Ryan, 2013;King and Ahmad, 2010), and overall attractiveness (Dipboye, 2005;Hamermesh and Biddle, 1994;Robins et al., 2011). Warhurst et al. (2009) have labeled such employment discrimination 'lookism,' and they point out that institutional responses to it are fraught with difficulties. ...
... Thus, we also estimate the ordered earnings variable with ordered probit. Because earnings in observational datasets tend to be skewed, we follow the common practice of analyzing the natural logarithm of earnings (Robins et al., 2011). Thus, coefficient estimates have the interpretation of an approximate percentage change (semi-elasticity). ...
... The only binary outcome is employment status, which is estimated with probit and follows a similar specification. Because earlier research has shown that gender differences are present with labor market discrimination, labor supply and earnings (French et al., 2009;Hamermesh and Biddle, 1994;Robins et al., 2011), we analyze men and women separately. ...
Do job applicants and employees with tattoos suffer a penalty in the labor market because of their body art? Previous research has found that tattooed people are widely perceived by hiring managers to be less employable than people without tattoos. This is especially the case for those who have visible tattoos (particularly offensive ones) that are difficult to conceal. Given this backdrop, our research surprisingly found no empirical evidence of employment, wage or earnings discrimination against people with various types of tattoos. In our sample, and considering a variety of alternative estimation techniques, not only are the wages and annual earnings of tattooed employees in the United States statistically indistinguishable from the wages and annual earnings of employees without tattoos, but tattooed individuals are also just as likely, and in some instances even more likely, to gain employment. These results suggest that, contrary to popular opinion as well as research findings with hiring managers and customers, having a tattoo does not appear to be associated with disadvantage or discrimination in the labor market.
... Studies concerning bias, based on physical appearance in the labour market, are not new. However, most of these investigations have analysed beauty as a motivation for remuneration (Andreoni & Petrie, 2008;Benzeval, Green & Macintyre, 2013;French, 2002;Hamermesh & Biddle, 1993;Mobius & Rosenblat, 2006;Robins, Homer & French, 2011;Tews, Stafford & Zhu, 2009). This research would focus on hiring decisions. ...
... More recently, Fletcher (2009) found that attractiveness is positively associated with earnings for young adults, even when controlling for ability measures. Robins et al. (2011) concluded from their research that physical attractiveness affected wage determination, largely confirming earlier empirical and theoretical studies. Patzer (1983), in his study of source credibility as a function of communicator physical attractiveness, summarised existing physical attractiveness research into four generalisations. ...
... Although the studies above add to the evidence of a beauty premium, these investigations do not consider other variables which may be related to success in the work place. Robins et al. (2011) found that most studies do not take personality attractiveness and grooming into account (Ritts, Patterson & Tubbs, 1992) and this may lead to research limitations. These authors found that when only beauty is measured it resulted in a beauty premium of approximately 12% for very physically attractive men, 7% for very physically attractive women and 4% for physically attractive women and men. ...
Orientation: It is a widely held belief that attractive people generally experience an easier life and that the door to success is opened by perfect bone structure and a sparkling smile. However, attractiveness might play a far lesser role in individual’s achieving their objectives than has previously been thought. Is it possible that an individual’s qualifications may have a greater influence on the perceptions of managers who assess the suitability of a candidate of a knowledge worker?
Research purpose: The study sets out to examine the relative predictive power of physical attractiveness and qualifications in the decision to hire a knowledge worker.
Motivation for the study: The research was motivated by a desire to explore the presence of bias in the decision-making process when seemingly rational individuals are exposed to factors such as physical attractiveness of a job candidate and then faced with a decision on whether to hire them.
Research design, approach and method: A two-phased experimental design was applied to investigate the existence and strength of the beauty premium amongst a group of managers who were provided with fictitious resumes coupled with photographs of the applicants. These managers were requested to make a hiring decision based on the information supplied.
Main findings: Although results confirm the existence of a beauty premium, it was relatively weak. It indicated that qualifications have a greater influence on a manager’s perception of the suitability of a candidate to fill a position of a knowledge worker.
Practical or managerial implications: The research draws attention to the possibility of bias in selection decisions and proposes ways in which such potential bias can be limited.
Contribution: This study contributes to knowledge concerning the existence or otherwise of a so-called beauty premium, with particular reference to its impact in the knowledge economy.
... Subsequent studies have complemented this research by adding a measure of grooming, and have found the earnings are significantly affected by the time spent on grooming (Das and Deloach 2011), and expenditure on grooming (Hamermesh, Meng and Zhang 2002). Robins et al. (2011) extended the measurements of physical attractiveness to beauty, personality and grooming, as "noncognitive skills," and find personality and grooming have a stronger effect on earnings than beauty. More narrowly-focused studies have investigated the beauty premium for specific occupations in which beauty brings an increase in productivity, and on performance indicators other than earnings. ...
... The first three assets of erotic capital that I will investigate are beauty, personality, and grooming. Following Beulaygue (2012) andFrench (2011), I use answers of interviewers to questions about the respondents regarding these three non-cognitive skills. The evaluations I use are from Wave I, to stand for early-stage non-cognitive skills that have formed when the individual was still at school. ...
... This view, of productivity enhancement through selection into specific occupations, particularly for women, is also supported by Pfann et al. (2000), and Mobius and Rosenblat (2006). Meanwhile, Hamermesh and Biddle (1994) find evidence of employer discrimination, which is also demonstrated by Robins et al. (2011). From the results shown in my paper, some level of employer and gender discrimination is plausible because erotic capital generally is only effective for women. ...
... Research suggests that facial attractiveness is related to higher levels of income-an objective indicator of career success-after controlling for other characteristics (e.g., Biddle & Hamermesh, 1998;Robins, Homer, & French, 2011;Scholz & Sicinski, 2015). For example, the attractiveness of selling agents is related to the higher dollar value of real estate transactions after controlling for characteristics of the real estate (Salter, Mixon, & King, 2012). ...
... Finally, some research has examined factors that differentiate the strength or direction of the relationship between attractiveness and organizational outcomes. Being well groomed, having positive personality traits, and adopting power poses can reduce the effects of physical attractiveness on work outcomes (Robins et al., 2011;Tu, Gilbert, & Bono, 2022). The role of gender has also been examined as a challenge to the "what is beautiful is good" effect. ...
Research suggests that physically attractive employees receive myriad workplace and career advantages compared to less attractive employees. Despite calls for more attention to the role of organizational context in understanding this phenomenon, a theoretically grounded conceptualization of an employer's value for physically attractive employees and a method of measuring this aspect of the work environment is currently absent from the literature. In this study, we introduce the construct lookism climate, which reflects perceptions that a given work environment implicitly or explicitly values employee physical attractiveness. We develop and validate a measure of lookism climate using eight samples comprising 1,857 full-time employed adults in the United States and South Korea. We establish the psychometric properties and nomological network of the Lookism Climate Scale (LCS), including its factor structure, convergent, discriminant, and criterion validity, and measurement equivalence. We provide evidence that the LCS can be used as an assessment of an individual's perceptions of workplace climate as well as employees’ shared conceptualization of climate. We also offer narrative examples of employee experiences with lookism climate. The introduction of the construct lookism climate and the LCS provides a pathway for future researchers to develop a deeper understanding of how organizational context contributes to the “beauty premium” in the workplace.
... Sociological literature has accumulated that physical attractiveness is socially constructed, and in general it is positively associated with quality of social experiences [1][2][3]. Empirical studies show that persons who are not physically attractive are disadvantaged in society, particularly in labor, education, and marriage markets [4][5][6][7]. In the labor market, workers whose appearance is socially preferred achieved greater occupational success [4,5]. ...
... Empirical studies show that persons who are not physically attractive are disadvantaged in society, particularly in labor, education, and marriage markets [4][5][6][7]. In the labor market, workers whose appearance is socially preferred achieved greater occupational success [4,5]. ...
Background
Despite a growing body of evidence suggesting that discrimination harms health, the association between appearance discrimination and health has been understudied. Our study investigated the association between perceived appearance discrimination and self-rated health among emerging adults using a nationally representative cohort study in South Korea.
Methods
We analyzed the 2nd-10th (2005–2013) waves of cohort data from the Korean Education Employment Panel (KEEP). KEEP consists of two groups of individuals who were 15 (group I) and 18 (group II) years old at the 1st wave of the survey (2004) and were followed annually. Appearance discrimination was assessed at baseline (19 years old: 5th wave for group I, 2nd wave for group II) and at follow-up (24 years old: 10th wave for group I, 7th wave for group II). Responses of appearance discrimination at the two-time points were classified into four groups: 1) never (no discrimination at both baseline and follow-up); 2) repeated (discrimination at both baseline and follow-up); 3) incident (discrimination only at follow-up); and 4) in error (discrimination only at baseline). Multivariate logistic regression was applied to examine the association between reporting patterns of appearance discrimination and poor self-rated health, adjusting for potential confounders.
Results
Compared to those who did not experience appearance discrimination, ‘repeated’ (OR: 3.70; 95% CI: 2.19–6.27) and ‘incident’ (OR: 3.10; 95% CI: 1.99–4.83) groups had a higher odds ratio of poor self-rated health after adjusting for potential confounders including respondents’ body mass index change and baseline self-rated health. However, no significant association was observed among those who reported appearance discrimination ‘in error’.
Conclusions
These results suggest that perceived appearance discrimination is associated with the health of Korean emerging adults considering participants’ reporting patterns of appearance discrimination.
... We also include grooming in these models in order to examine the degree to which grooming accounts for the overall attractiveness-based earnings differences (e.g., not adjusting for potential differences in occupation and other mechanisms through which attractiveness might operate), and whether grooming and attractiveness function similarly for women and men. Previous studies have also used Add Health data to examine the effects of attractiveness on pay (Fletcher, 2009; Gordon et al., 2013; Robins, Homer, & French 2011). However, they use data from Wave III or earlier, when respondents were aged 18–28 or younger, and thus earnings data are potentially problematic due to issues surrounding selection into the labor market and higher education (e.g., two studies excluded a large proportion of respondents that were still in a school setting at Wave III and only analyzed those who reported having completed school by this wave). ...
... However, they use data from Wave III or earlier, when respondents were aged 18–28 or younger, and thus earnings data are potentially problematic due to issues surrounding selection into the labor market and higher education (e.g., two studies excluded a large proportion of respondents that were still in a school setting at Wave III and only analyzed those who reported having completed school by this wave). Interestingly, in spite of this, these studies also find that physical attractiveness predicts earnings net of controls for ability and other personal traits, and Robins et al. (2011) and Gordon et al. (2013) also highlight the important role that grooming plays. ...
This study uses data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health) to (1) replicate research that documents a positive association between physical attractiveness and income; (2) examine whether the returns to attractiveness differ for women and men; and 3) explore the role that grooming plays in the attractiveness-income relationship. We find that attractive individuals earn roughly 20 percent more than people of average attractiveness, but this gap is reduced when controlling for grooming, suggesting that the beauty premium can be actively cultivated. Further, while both conventional wisdom and previous research suggest the importance of attractiveness might vary by gender, we find no gender differences in the attractiveness gradient. However, we do find that grooming accounts for the entire attractiveness premium for women, and only half of the premium for men. Our findings underscore the social construction of attractiveness, and in doing so illuminate a key mechanism for attractiveness premia that varies by gender.
... Some researchers found that being well groomed and having a pleasant personality were associated with a wage premium and partially mediated the effects of beauty alone. 12 At least one sociologist addressed the role of looks and sexual attractiveness in achieving work success. According to Hakim,13 for a woman, being aesthetically attractive is equivalent to having a degree in terms of impact on financial, social and overall life success. ...
This research paper explores the factors that empower women in C-suite positions and the relationship between personal brand and successful performance in managerial positions. The study was conducted in two stages. First, a qualitative approach consisting of 15 in-depth interviews with women in C-suite positions was employed to identify preliminary challenges and feelings relating to personal brand. The second stage was based on insights from a qualitative study of data obtained from an online questionnaire administered to 111 women in C-suite positions. Structural equation modelling was used to analyse the data through three key variables: feeling attractive, education level and affluence. The results indicated the validity of the conceptual model. Aspects of having a high level of education, feeling attractive and having economic independence were associated with significant empowerment for women. To date, there have been very few studies into the empowerment of women in managerial positions in emerging markets and the importance of them feeling successful in their professional development. The present study underscores the importance of personal branding for women in C-suite positions with respect to physical care, intellectual preparation and the satisfaction of being economically independent. Even though there are large differences in the gender salary gap, women in C-suite positions have been able to feel successful and competent when they feel satisfied with their personal brand.
... The authors' analysis is based on the proven definition of attraction and the results indicate that unattractive people receive 76 percent of the responses that good-looking people receive [7]. Robins et al. examined the impact of the three non-cognitive personal traits of beauty, personality and grooming on the income of young people in the labor market. The authors found that personality and grooming had a significant impact on compensation and that including them in the model for determining compensation reduced the effect of beauty to some extent [8]. Gu and Ji analyzed the influence of height and other physical characteristics of employees on their compensation using the data from the China Labor-force Dynamics Survey (CLDS). ...
The beauty premium is increasingly mentioned in today's society, as relevant social surveys and academic studies have shown that better-looking people are generally more likely to have higher salaries and better promotion opportunities in the workplace. Appearance discrimination has evolved into an "unwritten rule" in the workplace, which has never made any real improvements. Therefore, this paper takes the financial industry as an example through collating the literature and case studies and taking into account the characteristics of the financial industry, we have come up with the characteristics and the current situation of appearance discrimination in this industry. Meanwhile, this paper focuses on exploring feasible ways to solve the problem of appearance discrimination from the three perspectives of law, company and individuals, which is of practical significance in finding and providing solutions to improve appearance discrimination in the workplace. We hope that through this paper, readers will gain a better understanding of the current situation of appearance discrimination and be able to be sensible and courageous in defending their rights in the face of such discrimination.
... Furthermore, past research has shown that interviewers' characteristics, in particular their gender, may, in some settings, affect the assessment of attractiveness (Nedelec and Beaver 2011). However, we could account for interviewers' fixed effects, which did not affect the coefficients of primary interest (Robins, Homer, and French 2011). ...
Objective
Physical attractiveness is often studied in relation to various life outcomes, but there is a lack of research on its links to intergenerational educational, occupational, and income mobility. Individuals may use physical attractiveness as one of the channels for experiencing upward or avoiding downward social mobility.
Methods
Using data about 11,583 individuals from the United States National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, we contribute to the existing scholarship by investigating if physical attractiveness, assessed when individuals are around 15 years old, is an important predictor of intergenerational social mobility measured after 20 years.
Results
We find that physical attractiveness matters both for males’ and females’ intergenerational social mobility outcomes, but it is more important for males, even when childhood characteristics, such as various aspects of parental socioeconomic position, individuals’ health, a proxy for IQ, neighborhood conditions, and interviewers’ fixed effects, are accounted for using imputed data for observations with missing information. Across three measures of social mobility—education, occupation, and income—physically attractive males are more likely to be socially mobile than males of average attractiveness.
Conclusion
Physical attractiveness is an independent predictor of intergenerational social mobility outcomes regarding individuals’ educational, occupational, and income attainment.
... First, I included other measures of attractiveness: personality attractiveness and grooming. Other studies using AddHealth data (e.g., Robins et al 2011) have found that personality attractiveness and grooming moderate the relationship between physical attractiveness and social outcomes so I include them both here, not only for empirical and theoretical consistency but because I will test racial and gender differences which may reveal varying relationships between physical attractiveness, personality attractiveness, and grooming. Personality attractiveness is a progressive five-point scale for how attractive the interviewer found the respondent's personality during Wave 3. Grooming is a progressive five-point scale for how well-groomed the interviewer found the respondent at Wave 3. ...
As discussions of body size have become a ubiquitous part of discourse in the United States, research has revealed that regardless of the questions researchers ask on the topic: black and white Americans have largely different relationships to their bodies and body size. These differences result from divergent racial projects where white Americans sought to stigmatize fat bodies and black Americans sought to encourage all types of bodily acceptance. This manuscript leverages the historical processes of that project to examine the intersection between race, body size, and attractiveness. I use the National Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (AddHealth) and regression analysis to ask how race, body size, and attractiveness combine to influence individual income and whether the benefits of attractiveness are distributed evenly among racial groups and body sizes. Ultimately, my results reveal that race trumps both body size and physical attractiveness such that even the smallest and more attractive black people earn lower incomes than their white counterparts. Otherwise, attractiveness may mediate the relationship between body size and income and serve as the fulcrum of income inequality.
... Unlike other physical characteristics, such as race or height, attractiveness is pliable. Robins et al. (2011) mentioned that the return on attractiveness is obtained from women's personality attractiveness and grooming decision, both of which are considered rather easily transformable aspects of human capital. ...
Being attractive is believed to give many benefits in life. Economic studies have observed that physical attractiveness is associated with a higher wage. The benefits of being attractive have been perceived from early age, to the labor market, and to the marriage market. Despite all the advantages that beauty brings, efforts are being made to achieve or maintain attractiveness. People spend substantial resources, such as time and money, to enhance appearance. Using Ordinary Least Square (OLS) regression, this study examines the correlation between perceived attractiveness and earnings among urban working women in Indonesia. Findings show that the income of women who perceive themselves as attractive is 19% higher than those who are unattractive after makeup application. Meanwhile, attractiveness without makeup application is found uncorrelated with earnings. Thus, grooming behavior may be a source of the observed wage premium for female workers.
... As a particular form of labor-market discrimination, appearance discrimination has attracted growing attention from scholars since the mid-1990s. Empirical findings from various countries suggest that physically attractive workers are often better-paid than their less-attractive counterparts (Biddle and Hamermesh, 1998;Doorley and Sierminska, 2015;Pfann et al., 2000;Hamermesh and Biddle, 1994;Harper, 2000;Robins et al., 2011;Scholz and Sicinski, 2015). However, the ''beauty premiums'' found in wage equations may not imply the existence of returns to appearance per se. ...
This study examines whether physical appearance helps children gain popularity in their friendship networks using data from China’s migrant schools. Negative Binomial models, using appearance scores (created by a facial-recognition program incorporating numerous individuals’ appearance preferences) to predict children’s network centrality, yield statistically significant and positive appearance effects. The results hold even after netting out influences of children’s physical, cognitive, and mental development, family background, and school quality.
... In the labor market, workers with preferred appearances are believed to achieve greater occupational success (Gehrsitz, 2014;Robins, Homer, & French, 2011), so many employers adopt appearance-based hiring as a marketing technique in some Asian countries, where they do not have legislation regarding lookism (Cavico, Muffler, & Mujtaba, 2012). For example, Maurer-Fazio and Lei (2015) conducted a resume audit and found that applicants with perceived attractive photos received higher callback rates across gender, occupation, and location. ...
Lookism issues have been studied in the fields of economics, social science, physiology, and business. Studies have shown that physical appearance affects employers' judgment about the quality of an employee. The purpose of this chapter is to explore the effects of lookism on career development in organizations. In addition, this chapter discusses the strategies for reducing lookism in the workplace from a human resource development perspective and provides four strategies for reducing lookism. First, legislation should include and address issues of physical attractiveness. Second, diversity education and training should be provided to students, employees, and employers. Third, diversity management should be practiced in the workplace. Fourth, appropriate employment processes should be adopted. Future research should study lookism over a wider range of occupations across different cultures. In addition, future studies should develop theories and conceptual frameworks to support and explain current issues of lookism in the workplace.
... Hamermesh, Meng and Zhang (2002) found that while women's spending on beauty products and services increased women's earnings, the increase in income only partially covered this spending. Robins, Homer, and French (2011) find that being well groomed affects wages and taking grooming into account helps explain the relationship between attractiveness and income. Wong and Penner (2016), too, find that the relationship between attractiveness and income depends on grooming, but the effect is different for men and women: for women, grooming accounts for the whole 'beauty premium' whereas for men, it accounts for roughly half. ...
Physical appearance is generally associated with considerable labor-market sanctions, and appearances are thought to be of particular importance in the feminine service sector. However, little is known about workers’ experiences of appearance-based perks and penalties in Nordic labor markets. Drawing on literature on aesthetic capital and labor, this study aims to fill this research gap. The study uses a nationally representative survey (N = 1600) fielded in Finland and multinomial regression to determine whether subjective experiences of appearance-related perks and penalties are gendered, dependent on the field of work or daily work on appearances. Our main finding is that while both men and women experience looks-based perks and penalties, men are more likely to have experienced appearance having a say in salary negotiations. Our results shed light on the gendered logics of aesthetic capital and labor, and question economic understandings of beauty work as a pathway to labor market success for women
... In the labor market, workers with preferred appearances are believed to achieve greater occupational success (Gehrsitz, 2014;Robins, Homer, & French, 2011), so many employers adopt appearance-based hiring as a marketing technique in some Asian countries, where they do not have legislation regarding lookism (Cavico, Muffler, & Mujtaba, 2012). For example, Maurer-Fazio and Lei (2015) conducted a resume audit and found that applicants with perceived attractive photos received higher callback rates across gender, occupation, and location. ...
Lookism issues have been studied in the fields of economics, social science, physiology, and business. Studies have shown that physical appearance affects employers' judgment about the quality of an employee. The purpose of this chapter is to explore the effects of lookism on career development in organizations. In addition, this chapter discusses the strategies for reducing lookism in the workplace from a human resource development perspective and provides four strategies for reducing lookism. First, legislation should include and address issues of physical attractiveness. Second, diversity education and training should be provided to students, employees, and employers. Third, diversity management should be practiced in the workplace. Fourth, appropriate employment processes should be adopted. Future research should study lookism over a wider range of occupations across different cultures. In addition, future studies should develop theories and conceptual frameworks to support and explain current issues of lookism in the workplace.
... A recent study suggests that grooming has a beneficial effect on wages and-at the same time-reduces the effect of beauty on wages substantially (Wong & Penner, 2016). There seems also to exist a penalty for poor grooming (Robins et al., 2011). Moreover, a study on attitudes toward job candidates found that neat grooming and business-like clothing had more favorable impacts than mere attractiveness (Ruetzler et al., 2012). ...
Prior research has provided evidence that attractiveness is associated with work-related advantages. It is less clear, however, whether attractiveness is an antecedent or a consequence of professional success. To answer this question, associational football in Germany is used as an exemplifying case. Portrait pictures of German football players were retrieved, one picture from a very early career stage and one from a very late one. Attractiveness of these portraits was assessed by the “truth of consensus” method. Panel regression models are applied to analyze changes in attractiveness and relate these changes to professional success. Findings show that success as a footballer cannot be predicted with attractiveness at early career stages. Instead, the increase of attractiveness over time is more pronounced among very successful players. It is thus concluded that successful individuals are not more attractive in the very beginning, but improve their appearance throughout their careers.
... Similarly, some research suggests attractiveness premium and plainness penalty need not be both present at the same time. For instance,Harper (2000) finds evidence for the plainness penalty only whileRobins, Homer and French (2011) find beautyResearch has shown benefits of attractiveness in a wide range of socio-economic outcomes beyond the labor market.Hamermesh (2006) considers candidates' appearance on the ballots in the annual elections of officers of the American Economic Association between 1996 and 2004. Since the same candidate can participate multiple times, often with different pictures. ...
We study the impact of physical attractiveness on productivity. Previous literature found a strong impact on wages and career progression, which can be either due to discrimination in favor of good-looking people or can reflect an association between attractiveness and productivity. We utilize a context where there is no or limited face-to-face interaction, academic publishing, so that the scope for beauty-based discrimination should be limited. Using data on around 2,000 authors of journal publications in economics, we find a significantly positive effect of authors’ attractiveness on both journal quality and citations. However, the impact on citations disappears after we control for journal quality.
... A particular form of discrimination, appearance discrimination, has attracted growing attention since the mid-1990s. Empirical findings from various countries suggest that physically attractive workers are often paid better than less attractive ones (Hamermesh and Biddle, 1994;Biddle and Hamermesh, 1998;Harper, 2000;Robins et al., 2011;Scholz and Sicinski, 2015). ...
Using appearance scores created by facial-recognition and machine-learning programs that incorporate tens of thousands of individuals’ appearance preferences, we find in China's migrant schools that students’ appearance has a statistically significant and positive effect on their teachers’ evaluation of their exam performance, even after netting out the influences of important confounders such as physical growth, cognitive ability, mental health status, family background, and school quality.
... Nevertheless, other authors argue (based on the British and American data) that the beauty premium disappears once individual differences (ability, health, personality) are controlled for (Harper, 2000;Kanazawa and Still, 2017). The authors of the most recently published paper, also based on US data, come to the conclusion that there are no gender differences in the attractiveness gradient of income and that grooming accounts for the entire attractiveness premium for women and half of the premium for men (Wong and Penner, 2016; see also Robins, Homer and French, 2011). ...
The main objective of the study is threefold: first, to examine the role of attractiveness in the Czech labour market; second, to assess gender differences in returns of attractiveness; and third, to show that the positive association between attractiveness and earnings does not disappear even when cognitive skills, social background, occupational status and individual characteristics are controlled for. The study uses data from the first large-scale sociological survey focusing on attractiveness carried out in the Czech Republic. The results provide strong evidence for the hypothesis that, in general, more attractive people have a better chance of higher socioeconomic occupational status as well as higher incomes than less attractive individuals even when controlling for cognitive skills, social background, occupational status and personality. However, the analysis also shows that the relationships are different for men and women. The study finds that the income premium for attractiveness is markedly higher among prime-aged women than men. The authors conclude that there have been profound changes in the last 30–40 years in the Western world and that the importance of physical attractiveness and erotic capital has been increasing, especially for women.
... Nevertheless, other authors argue (based on the British and American data) that the beauty premium disappears once individual differences (ability, health, personality) are controlled for (Harper, 2000;Kanazawa and Still, 2017). The authors of the most recently published paper, also based on US data, come to the conclusion that there are no gender differences in the attractiveness gradient of income and that grooming accounts for the entire attractiveness premium for women and half of the premium for men (Wong and Penner, 2016; see also Robins, Homer and French, 2011). ...
... One reason why people focus on external features is that often humans use a person's looks as a signal for the person's personality or productivity (Robins et al., 2011). For example, blonde women are often stereotyped as dumb or incompetent while redheads are seen as people with fiery tempers (Takeda et al., 2006, Weir andFine-Davis, 1989). ...
Discrimination based on appearance has serious economic consequences. Women with blonde hair are often considered beautiful, but dumb, which is a potentially harmful stereotype since many employers seek intelligent workers. Using the NLSY79, a large nationally representative survey tracking young baby boomers, this research analyzes the IQ of white women and men according to hair color. Blonde women have a higher mean IQ than women with brown, red and black hair. Blondes are more likely classified as geniuses and less likely to have extremely low IQ than women with other hair colors, suggesting the dumb blonde stereotype is a myth.
... This result is also found inRobins, Homer, and French (2011), who find that for men, ''the beauty premium appears to span all occupations and is somewhat larger in occupations where beauty is less important.'' ...
We use unique longitudinal data to document an economically and statistically significant positive correlation between the facial attractiveness of male high school graduates and their subsequent labor market earnings. There are only weak links between facial attractiveness and direct measures of cognitive skills and no link between facial attractiveness and mortality. Even after including a lengthy set of characteristics, including IQ, high school activities, proxy measures for confidence and personality, family background, and additional respondent characteristics in an empirical model of earnings, the attractiveness premium is present in the respondents' mid-30s and early 50s. Our findings are consistent with attractiveness being an enduring, positive labor market characteristic.
... Attractiveness was rated using a 5-point scale, with responses ranging from 1 = very unattractive to 5 = very attractive. Several studies have used this measurement approach (e.g., Colabianchi, Ievers-Landis, & Borawski, 2006;Robins, Homer, & French, 2011), and evidence indicates that observers tend to agree when evaluating attractiveness. For instance, based on their meta-analysis, Langlois et al. (2000) concluded that 'raters agreed about the attractiveness of both adults and children' (p. ...
Physical attractiveness, cognitive ability, and self‐control predict many important outcomes but are rarely examined in combination, particularly in the context of career success. Drawing from Judge et al .'s (2009, J. Appl. Psychol ., 94 , 742) model of income antecedents and Caspi et al .'s (1989, J. Pers ., 57 , 375) concepts of cumulative and interactional continuity, this study investigated the pathways leading from these characteristics to career outcomes. Specifically, we developed a model with links involving (1) attractiveness, intelligence, and self‐control; (2) self‐evaluations, delinquent behaviours, educational attainment, and job complexity; and (3) income and job satisfaction. The model was examined with data from three waves of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health. Results supported a slightly modified model, with major findings indicating attractiveness, intelligence, and self‐control measured during adolescence predicted later self‐evaluations or delinquent behaviour; these variables predicted later education level; education level predicted job complexity; and job complexity predicted income and job satisfaction. Implications related to this integrated model are discussed.
Practitioner points
Interventions might focus on enhancing self‐control‐related skills in adolescents in an effort to improve later work‐related outcomes.
Core self‐evaluations and delinquent tendencies could also be targeted during adolescence to influence life pathways relevant to career outcomes.
... Not long after the 'war for talent' rhetoric took hold, Pfeffer (2001) warned that talent programmes can unleash hazardous social forces stemming from the glorification of outsiders above existing employees, the valorization of a few individuals over teamwork and the failure to correct deep cultural problems that affect the performance of the majority of employees. The selection processes at the heart of talent identification are prone to biasing effects (Buckley et al. 2001;Lefkowitz 2000;Wayne and Liden 1995), which also derive from the gendered nature of leadership (Baxter 2011;Billing and Alvesson 2000) and personal factors (Robins, Homer, and French 2011). ...
This article takes a fresh and radical look at organizational talent management strategies. It offers a critique of some of the prevalent assumptions underpinning certain talent management practices, particularly those fuelled by the narratives of scarcity and metaphors of war. We argue that talent management programmes based on these assumptions ignore important social and ethical dimensions, to the detriment of both organizations and individuals. We offer instead a set of principles proceeding from, and informed by, Sen's ‘capability approach’ (CA). Based on the idea of freedoms not resources, the CA circumvents discourses of scarcity and restores vital social and ethical considerations to ideas about talent management. We also emphasize its versatility and sensitivity to the particular circumstances of individual organizations such that corporate leaders and human resource practitioners might use the principles for a number of practical purposes.
... Conceptually, it would be ideal to measure these characteristics immediately prior to the beginning of the relationship and well before a cohabitation and/or marriage agreement is reached. Nevertheless, several studies find significant correlation of these personal traits over time (Robins et al., 2011). ...
This study examines how personal traits affect the likelihood of entering into a cohabitating or marital relationship using a competing risk survival model with cohabitation and marriage as competing outcomes. The data are from Waves 1, 3, and 4 of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, a rich dataset with a large sample of young adults (N=9835). A personal traits index is constructed from interviewer-assessed scores on the respondents' physical attractiveness, personality, and grooming. Having a higher score on the personal traits index is associated with a greater hazard of entering into a marital relationship for men and women, but the score does not have a significant influence on entering into a cohabitating relationship. Numerous sensitivity tests support the core findings.
... On the other hand, there has been growing interest in physical attractiveness on labor market returns (e.g., Berri et al., 2011, Fletcher, 2009, Hamermesh and Biddle, 1994, Johnston, 2010, Mobius and Rosenblat, 2006and Robins et al., 2011. These studies concluded that good looks can influence the level of earnings; however, the effects are inconclusive depending on the nature of the job. ...
Using a unique random survey of prostitutes in Taipei city of Taiwan, this study investigates the association between obesity, condom use and prostitutes’ price. Results show that overweight prostitutes charge less for their services. However, prostitutes charge more for performing risky sex regardless of the weight status. By further looking at weight and height, we found that the price of prostitutes is only associated with weight.
... Personal attractiveness influences success across a range of occupations (Hamermesh & Biddle 1994, Biddle & Hamermesh 1998). An attractive personality and high standards of personal grooming also make a difference (Robins et al. 2011). The implications for organisations in this respect are clear -to recognise sources of bias and to put in place systems and procedures to counteract them as much as possible. ...
Organisational approaches to talent management are often concerned with the ways that a small proportion of relatively high‐performing employees are identified and managed in relation to the majority. Despite a growing literature on talent management, no papers have provided any guidance on how to evaluate it from an ethical standpoint. After considering what is meant by talent, this paper considers the ethical issues that arise from the operation of talent management programmes. These considerations are then used to create a framework that has the potential to influence the practical design of talent programmes and which may focus further debate into the ethics of talent management.
... Some study results lend support to just one of the effects, however. Harper (2000), e.g., found evidence for a beauty penalty only whereas Robins, Homer and French (2011) for a beauty premium only. ...
Traditionally, social scientists have studied socio-economic
inequalities mainly by looking at the impact of individuals' economic,
cultural and social capital. Some scholars have recently argued that
other types of resources, such as genetic and erotic capital, may also
play a role in the processes that lead to the formation of social
inequalities. Using a unique longitudinal dataset, the Wisconsin
Longitudinal Study, this paper explores the impact of facial
attractiveness on people's socio-economic standing over the life course.
Methodologically, we employ a set of multilevel Growth Curve Models. Two
findings clearly stand out from our analysis. Firstly, facial
attractiveness does matter, both for men and women, and secondly, its
impact is constant over the employment history.
We examine the role of first impressions in angel investor decision-making. Video stills of entrepreneurs pitching on the Shark Tank show and in Startup Battlefield competitions yield six measures of first impressions of entrepreneurs’ facial traits and two principal components: one that captures general ability and the other that contrasts charm and managerial ability. We find positive associations between both components and the likelihood of entrepreneurs receiving an investment offer or winning a competition round. Post-event business outcome analyses reveal that investors internalize entrepreneurs’ general ability rationally but exhibit irrational tendencies when internalizing entrepreneurs’ charm and managerial ability. Investment experience mitigates investors’ irrational use of charm and managerial ability cues.
In this paper, I examine the impact of eye and hair color on wages at one’s first-job after completing schooling. Evidence suggests that having blond/red hair has a positive impact on wages, particularly for white people and females. Using detailed ethnic origin information collected by the Census and using tipping point analysis, I find that individuals with blond/red hair who reside in a county where ethnicities with brown/black hair/eyes constitute the majority, earn around nine percent more compared to individuals with brown/black hair residing in the same county.
Traditional rationales for discrimination law often focus on the immutability of characteristics. Pursuant to these rationales, discrimination should be prohibited where it relates to a characteristic that a person cannot change, or where the characteristic is so connected to a person’s identity that they should not be forced to change. Thus, discrimination is wrongful where the characteristic is an ‘accident of birth’. But the reach of discrimination laws has expanded far beyond these traditional inceptions. Now discrimination is prohibited on a range of grounds, some immutable and others mutable. An example is the prohibition of discrimination on the grounds of ‘physical features’ which prohibits discrimination on the basis of both immutable characteristics such as height and weight and other mutable characteristics such as tattoos, grooming standards, and hairstyles. This article considers the nature of discrimination on the basis of such mutable characteristics and if the prohibition on such discrimination is consistent with the current normative theories of discrimination law. It argues that rather conceiving discrimination on the basis of tattoos and hairstyles as an independent ground for protection, it is better understood as a manifestation of other, and often intersectional disadvantage based upon race, gender, disability and age.
While the existence of a beauty premium is documented for many labour markets, there has been no study on the association of attractiveness with fringe benefits. This is a significant limitation of the extant literature, since fringe benefits are increasingly acknowledged as an integral part of the employees’ compensation, and a main indicator of job quality. Using the Canadian General Social Survey of 2016, the present paper examines how a self-rated measure of attractiveness associates with both labour earnings and fringe benefits. Employing a rich set of controls, no evidence for a beauty premium is found for men, while there is some evidence for a beauty penalty for women. However, attractiveness is found to positively predict the number of fringe benefits of both men and women. Therefore, at equal level of earnings, more attractive individuals appear able to secure higher quality jobs, as measured by the number of fringe benefits. The results, hence, suggest that the effects of attractiveness on labour market outcomes cannot be fully captured by a separate examination of earnings and the hiring process.
Using novel data from the Berea Panel Study, we show that the beauty wage premium for college graduates exists only in jobs where attractiveness is plausibly a productive characteristic. A large premium exists in jobs with substantial amounts of interpersonal interaction but not in jobs that require working with information. This finding is inconsistent with employer taste-based discrimination, which would favor attractive workers in all jobs. Unique task data address concerns that measurement error in the importance of interpersonal tasks may bias empirical work toward finding employer discrimination. Our conclusions are in stark contrast to the findings of existing research.
The accumulated evidence suggests that lighter-complected blacks are more successful in our society than their darker-complected counterparts. Prior research also documents a correlation between physical attractiveness and socio-economic status attainment. The current study bridges the literatures on colorism and physical attraction and examines the complex relationship between skin color, physical attractiveness, gender, on the one hand, and three indicators of status attainment (educational attainment, hourly wage and job quality), on the other, for black young adults. Controls include family SES, family structure, parent–child relationships, and other covariates. Analysis was conducted in STATA and via structural equation modeling using MPlus software. The analysis shows that lighter-skinned young blacks attain a higher educational level, receive higher wages and enjoy better-quality jobs than their darker skinned co-ethnics. Moreover, the results show that more physically attractive young blacks, especially women, are advantaged in terms of educational attainment, wages, and job quality than their less physically attractive counterparts. These findings suggest that, among blacks, the skin color stratification coincides with that based on physical attractiveness to a large degree, with the implication being that the skin tone is a predictor of both physical attractiveness and social status for black men and women.
The popularity of tattooing has increased substantially in recent years, particularly among adolescents and young adults. Moreover, tattooed images are permanent unless the individual opts for expensive, time consuming, and painful removal procedures. Given the increasing popularity of tattooing, and the permanent nature of this action, it is of interest to know whether tattooed workers are more or less likely to be employed and, conditional on employment, if they receive wages that are different from the wages of their non-tattooed peers. To investigate these questions, we analyze two large data sets—from the United States and Australia—with measures of tattoo status, employment, earnings, and other pertinent variables. Regardless of country, gender, specific measures, or estimation technique, the results consistently show that having a tattoo is negatively and significantly related to employment and earnings in bivariate analyses, but the estimates become smaller and nonsignificant after controlling for human capital, occupation, behavioral choices, lifestyle factors, and other individual characteristics related to labor market outcomes. Various robustness checks confirm the stability of the core findings. These results suggest that, once differences in personal characteristics are taken into account, tattooed and non-tattooed workers are treated similarly in the labor market. We offer suggestions for improving future surveys to enable a better understanding of the relationships between tattooed workers and their labor market outcomes.
We present a laboratory experiment to assess the relative and independent effect of perceived attractiveness and personality traits on hiring decisions. Our results indicate that attractiveness and conscientiousness, followed by emotional stability, are important drivers of recruiters’ decisions.
This article examines the effect of students’ physical attractiveness on a variety of judgments made in educational settings. This review discusses the following issues: (a) methodology for studying physical attractiveness in the classroom; (b) teacher judgments, expectations, and impressions of physically attractive students; and (c) the influence of moderator variables such as gender, race, conduct, and physical attractiveness effects. A descriptive and a meta-analytic review of the research indicated that physically attractive students are judged usually more favorably by teachers in a number of dimensions including intelligence, academic potential, grades, and various social skills. The potential influence of moderator variables—such as, student gender, race, and past performance on the physical attractiveness bias—is also examined. Finally, the possible mechanisms responsible for the attractiveness effect and the limitations of this research are discussed.
This paper explores the interface between personality psychology and economics. We examine the predictive power of personality and the stability of personality traits over the life cycle. We develop simple analytical frameworks for interpreting the evidence in personality psychology and suggest promising avenues for future research.
Adjusted for many other determinants, beauty affects earnings; but does it lead directly to the differences in productivity that we believe generate earnings differences? We take a large sample of student instructional ratings for a group of university teachers and acquire six independent measures of their beauty, and a number of other descriptors of them and their classes. Instructors who are viewed as better looking receive higher instructional ratings, with the impact of a move from the 10th to the 90th percentile of beauty being substantial. This impact exists within university departments and even within particular courses, and is larger for male than for female instructors. Disentangling whether this outcome represents productivity or discrimination is, as with the issue generally, probably impossible.
The authors examine the impact of looks on earnings using interviewers' ratings of respondents' physical appearance. Plain people earn less than average-looking people, who earn less than the good-looking. The plainness penalty is 5 to 10 percent, slightly larger than the beauty premium. Effects for men are at least as great as for women. Unattractive women have lower labor-force participation rates and marry men with less human capital. Better-looking people sort into occupations where beauty may be more productive but the impact of individuals' looks is mostly independent of occupation, suggesting the existence of pure employer discrimination. Copyright 1994 by American Economic Association.
Corruption in the public sector erodes tax compliance and leads to higher tax evasion. Moreover, corrupt public officials abuse their public power to extort bribes from the private agents. In both types of interaction with the public sector, the private agents are bound to face uncertainty with respect to their disposable incomes. To analyse effects of this uncertainty, a stochastic dynamic growth model with the public sector is examined. It is shown that deterministic excessive red tape and corruption deteriorate the growth potential through income redistribution and public sector inefficiencies. Most importantly, it is demonstrated that the increase in corruption via higher uncertainty exerts adverse effects on capital accumulation, thus leading to lower growth rates.
We decompose the beauty premium in an experimental labor market where "employers" determine wages of "workers" who perform a maze-solving task. This task requires a true skill which we show to be unaffected by physical attractiveness. We find a sizable beauty premium and can identify three transmission channels: (a) physically attractive workers are more confident and higher confidence increases wages; (b) for a given level of confidence, physically attractive workers are (wrongly) considered more able by employers; (c) controlling for worker confidence, physically attractive workers have oral skills (such as communication and social skills) that raise their wages when they interact with employers. Our methodology can be adopted to study the sources of discriminatory pay differentials in other settings.
this paper are described in Appendix 1. Methods of estimation differ of course, and the demographic groups covered and the years for which the data apply vary considerably. We have surveyed these studies and selected what we considered to be the best specified estimates in each study. For example, we favored estimates using measurement error correction and instrumental variables estimation or other techniques to take account of endogeneity of the explanatory variables. We have included all studies available to us
A growing literature claims beautiful workers receive higher wages. Using five national-level surveys, we find that in multivariate regression models there is no beauty premium. Most beauty coefficients are statistically insignificant, even in replications of published work. Simple model alterations, such as clustering on the primary sampling unit or redefining other covariates, eliminate much of the beauty premia from two surveys. Adding controls for other ascriptive characteristics, such as personality, results in mostly insignificant beauty coefficients. Even in surveys without other ascriptives, the beauty premium is neither consistently significant nor consistently positive. Either beauty's effect is smaller than previously reported, or it is mediated through other variables.
Matching and attribute trade are two perspectives used to explain mate selection. We investigated patterns of matching and trade, focusing on obesity, using Add Health Romantic Pair data (N = 1,405 couples). Obese individuals, relative to healthy weight individuals, were less likely to have physically attractive partners, with this disadvantage greater for women than men, and greater for White women than Black women. Additional education, a more attractive personality, and better grooming increased the probability of having a physically attractive partner and offset the disadvantage of obesity for some individuals. Unexpectedly, we found women, like men, trade education for their partners’ physical attractiveness. Despite evidence of attribute trade, matching with respect to physical characteristics was the dominant mate selection pattern.
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It is commonly believed that attractive people are more successful, but the empirical support for this belief is mixed. A number of role-playing, laboratory studies have demonstrated that more attractive men are more often hired, but the laboratory data for women are less consistent. Few studies have explored the effects of attractiveness on actual hiring and starting salaries for men or women. Even less work has been done on the impact of attractiveness once on the job. It was predicted that there would be positive effects for attractiveness and that the effects would be stronger as people worked longer on their jobs. To test this prediction, a sample of 737 male and female MBA graduates from the years between 1973 and 1982 was used to explore how facial attractiveness relates to starting and later salaries. Results indicated that more attractive men had higher starting salaries and they continued to earn more over time. For women, there was no effect of attractiveness for starting salaries, but more attractive women earned more later on in their jobs. By 1983, men were found to earn 2150 more. Implications for research in this area are discussed.
To most economists, personal grooming is a non-market activity. The standard view is that time spent in non-market activities is counterproductive as it reduces work effort and job commitment (Becker, 1985). But grooming may be different. Grooming provides an important source of communication about workers, their values, social identities and personalities. There is reason to believe that certain productive personality traits may be inferred on the basis of personal grooming. In this paper, we use data from the American Time Use Survey's (2009) pooled cross-section 2003-2007 to investigate the effect of additional time spent grooming on earnings. The results show that the effect of grooming on earnings differs significantly by gender and race. These results cannot easily be reconciled with any one particular theory, but imply a complex interaction between several possible effects.
Combining labor-market information, appraisals of respondents' beauty, and household expenditures allows us to examine within a unified framework the relative magnitudes of investment and consumption components in one activity, women's spending on beauty-enhancing goods and services. We find that beauty raises women's earnings adjusted for a wide range of controls. Additional spending on clothing and cosmetics has a generally positive marginal impact on a woman's perceived beauty. The relative sizes of these effects demonstrate that such purchases pay back no more than 15% of additional unit of expenditure in the form of higher earnings. Most such spending seems to represent consumption.
I estimate the effects of changing an ascriptive characteristic—beauty—on a market outcome. Taking advantage of candidates' multiple appearances in elections to office in a professional association and of the presence of different photographs accompanying the ballots that voters received, I show that exogenous increases in beauty raise a candidate's chance of success. The results support the inference that differential outcomes are inherent in agents' responses to an ascriptive characteristic and do not stem from correlations with unobserved differences in productivity-enhancing characteristics.
Using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health), we investigate whether certain aspects of personal appearance (i.e., physical attractiveness, personality, and grooming) affect a student's cumulative grade point average (GPA) in high school. When physical attractiveness is entered into the model as the only measure of personal appearance (as has been done in previous studies), it has a positive and statistically significant impact on GPA for female students and a positive yet not statistically significant effect for male students. Including personality and grooming, the effect of physical attractiveness turns negative for both groups, but is only statistically significant for males. For male and female students, being very well groomed is associated with a statistically significant GPA premium. While grooming has the largest effect on GPA for male students, having a very attractive personality is most important for female students. Numerous sensitivity analyses support the core results for grooming and personality. Possible explanations for these findings include teacher discrimination, differences in student objectives, and rational resource allocation decisions.
This paper examines the wage returns to attractiveness for young high school graduates. Findings show that wage returns to attractiveness are large relative to ability and beauty and ability are complements at high attractiveness ratings but substitutes at low ratings.
The authors propose models with an ascriptive characteristic generating earnings differentials and causing sectoral sorting, allowing them to distinguish among sources producing such differentials. They use longitudinal data on a large sample of graduates from one law school and measure beauty by rating matriculation photographs. Better-looking attorneys who graduated in the 1970s earned more than others after five years of practice, an effect that grew with experience. Attorneys in the private sector are better-looking than those in the public sector, differences that rise with age. These results support theories of dynamic sorting and customer behavior. Copyright 1998 by University of Chicago Press.
Given that instructional student ratings measure differences in pedagogical productivity, this study examines whether perceived attractiveness of German university teachers impact on these differences. Apart from some refinements and adjustments to idiosyncracies of the German system of higher learning, the quantitative analysis widely follows the strategy of the seminal work by Hamermesh and Parker (2005), based on US data. In comparison to findings for the USA, perceived attractiveness of teachers is found to have, if at all, only a weakly significant and quantitatively less important impact on the evaluation outcomes.
The literature contains numerous studies on earnings differentials based on age, race, and gender. Comparatively few studies have examined differences in labour market success related to physical appearance. Using three waves of data collected at two organizations, this paper tested for earnings differentials among workers based on their self-reported appearance. Significant earnings premiums for attractiveness were found for women, but not for men. Copyright 2002 by Taylor and Francis Group
This paper provides an analysis of the link between suicidal behaviors and human capital formation of young adults in the United States. Using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, we estimate the effects of suicide thoughts and attempts on the probability of engaging in work or attending school. The richness of the data set allows us to implement several strategies to control for unobserved heterogeneity and the potential reverse causality. These strategies include using a large set of control variables that are likely to be correlated with both suicidal behavior and the outcome measures, an instrumental variables method, and fixed effects analyses from the subsamples of twin and sibling pairs. Results from the different identification strategies consistently indicate that both suicide thoughts and suicide attempts decrease the likelihood that a young adult individual engages in work or schooling.
Reflected self-appraisal suggests that individual functioning is related to the fit between individual characteristics and the norms of their primary contexts. To apply this social psychological concept to the study of obesity, we hypothesized that adolescents at risk of obesity would have lower academic achievement overall than other students, especially in schools in which their weight status was most likely to elicit negative evaluations. Multi-level modeling of nationally representative data revealed that the negative longitudinal association between risk of obesity and achievement was stronger in schools with higher rates of romantic activity and lower average body size among students, two school contexts in which obesity was likely to be stigmatized, but weaker in schools with higher rates of athletic participation, a school context in which such stigmatization was also likely. Additional analyses suggested that this last, unexpected finding reflected a process of niche-picking.
In this paper I investigate the impact of body mass index (BMI) on occupational attainment in England. Using pooled cross-sectional health survey data for 1997 and 1998 I find using OLS that, conditional on a comprehensive set of individual and area covariates, BMI has a positive and significant effect on occupational attainment in males and a negative and significant effect in females. Subsequent analyses with different covariates show considerable variation in the results for males, while for females the effect of BMI is significant and negative irrespective of the covariates used. IV coefficients on the BMI measures are insignificant in all models, though I am unable to identify any endogeneity problems with respect to BMI.
Economists have argued that obesity may lead to worse labor market outcomes, especially for women. Empirical methods to test this hypothesis have not thus far adequately controlled for the endogeneity of obesity. We use variation in genotype to predict variation in phenotype (obesity). Genetic information from specific genes linked to obesity in the biomedical literature provides strong exogenous variation in the body mass index and thus can be used as instrumental variables. These genes predict swings in weight of between 5 and 20 pounds for persons between five and six feet tall. We use additional genetic information to control for omitted variables correlated with both obesity and labor market outcomes. We analyzed data from the third wave of the Add Health data set, when respondents are in their mid-twenties. Results from our preferred models show no effect of lagged obesity on the probability of employment or on wages, for either men or women. This paper shows the potential of using genetic information in social sciences.
Using data from three waves of Add Health we find that being very attractive reduces a young adult's (ages 18-26) propensity for criminal activity and being unattractive increases it for a number of crimes, ranging from burglary to selling drugs. A variety of tests demonstrate that this result is not because beauty is acting as a proxy for socio-economic status. Being very attractive is also positively associated adult vocabulary test scores, which suggests the possibility that beauty may have an impact on human capital formation. We demonstrate that, especially for females, holding constant current beauty, high school beauty (pre-labor market beauty) has a separate impact on crime, and that high school beauty is correlated with variables that gauge various aspects of high school experience, such as GPA, suspension or having being expelled from school, and problems with teachers. These results suggest two handicaps faced by unattractive individuals. First, a labor market penalty provides a direct incentive for unattractive individuals toward criminal activity. Second, the level of beauty in high school has an effect on criminal propensity 7-8 years later, which seems to be due to the impact of the level of beauty in high school on human capital formation, although this second avenue seems to be effective for females only.
This paper uses the Five-Factor Model of personality structure as an organizing framework to explore the effects of personality on earnings. Using data from a longitudinal survey of American high school graduates, we find that extroversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism and openness to experience are rewarded/penalized significantly and differentially across genders. Antagonistic, emotionally stable and open men enjoy substantial earnings advantages over otherwise similar individuals. In case of women, the labor market appears to value conscientiousness and openness to experience. The positive returns to openness are very similar across genders, suggesting that being creative, unconventional and artistic is equally important for men and women working in all types of occupations. Moreover, we find significant gender differences in personality characteristics. Decomposition of personality-based earnings differentials into trait and parameter effects suggests that gender-atypical traits reduce the earnings advantage that individuals would otherwise enjoy under their own-sex wage structure. Overall, we find that the impact of personality on earnings is significant but not large - not trivial either - and comparable to the impact of differences in cognitive ability.
The authors adopt the Five-Factor Model of personality structure to explore how personality affected the earnings of a large group of men and women who graduated from Wisconsin high schools in 1957 and were re-interviewed in 1992. All five basic traits--extroversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism, and openness to experience--had statistically significant positive or negative earnings effects, and together they appear to have had effects comparable to those commonly found for cognitive ability. Among men, substantial earnings advantages were associated with antagonism (the obverse of agreeableness), emotional stability (the obverse of neuroticism), and openness to experience; among women, with conscientiousness and openness to experience. Of the five traits, the evidence indicates that agreeableness had the greatest influence on gender differences in earnings: men were considerably more antagonistic (non-agreeable) than women, on average, and men alone were rewarded for that trait.
The influence of physical appearance in the labour market is examined using longitudinal cohort data covering 11,407 individual born in Britain in 1958. Results show that physical appearance has a substantial effect on earnings and employment patterns for both men and women. Irrespective of gender, those who are assessed as unattractive or short, experience a significant earnings penalty. Tall men receive a pay premium while obese women experience a pay penalty. The bulk of the pay differential for appearance arises from employer discrimination, although we find evidence for productivity differences among occupations. The impact of physical appearance is also evident in the marriage market. Among women, those who are tall or obese are less likely to be married; while among men, lower marriage rates are found for those who are short or unattractive. Copyright 2000 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd
The Beauty Premium Is Not Robust', Working paper Available at: http://www
- K Doran
- J Hersch
Doran K. and Hersch J. (2009) 'The Beauty Premium Is Not Robust', Working paper. Available at:
http://www.nd.edu/~kdoran/BeautyNotRobust.pdf.
‘Changing Looks and Changing “Discrimination:” The Beauty of Economists’
- Hamermesh