Längden spelar roll

Att vara vacker ger, allt annat lika, högre lön. Detsamma tycks gälla även för längd. Långa personer tjänar, allt annat lika, mer än korta personer:

Persico et al. (2004) analyze the effects of height and find that especially teenage height exerts a positive influence on income later in life. For a given adult height, increasing height at age 16 by ten centimeters increased adult wages by an average of ten percent. Heineck (2005) finds no height premium for females or East German males but does find one for West German males: for them, each ten-centimeter increase in height gives rise to an average income increase of four percent (in the 175–195 centimeter range).

Uppdatering: Greg Mankiw och Matthew Weinzierl föreslår (förvisso mest som ett sätt att utmana den optimala beskattningsteorins normativa utgångspunkter) en ”längdskatt”. Om långa tjänar mer än korta för att de är långa är det inte mer än rätt att de betalar mer i skatt. Eller?

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Heineck, G. (2005). “Up in the Skies? The Relationship between Body Height and Earnings in Germany.” Labour 19(3): 469–489.

Persico, N., Postlewaite, A. och Silverman, D. (2004). “The Effect of Adolescent Experience on Labor Market Outcomes: The Case of Height.” Journal of Political Economy 112(5): 1019–1053.

Peter S-W 20:02 den 9 december 2007

Lästips:
http://www.gnxp.com/blog/2007/11/are-tall-women-like-porsches.php

”There is a positive correlation between height and IQ of roughly 0.2 … Interestingly, the height-IQ correlation is entirely due to differences in leg length, since the correlation vanishes when sitting height is used instead of standing height. The simplest explanation that Jensen & Sinha propose is that there is cross-assortative mating between female leg length and male IQ. They summarize several studies which show that tall women, no matter what economic class they are born into, tend to climb the economic ladder more easily and marry higher-status husbands.”
nonicoclolasos 20:19 den 9 december 2007

Peter: ett mycket intressant resultat.

Det påminner lite om argumentet och resultatet i Kanazawa och Kovar (2004), som påvisar ett positivt samband mellan skönhet och intelligens.

Abstract: ”Empirical studies demonstrate that individuals perceive physically attractive others to be more intelligent than physically unattractive others. While most researchers dismiss this perception as a ‘bias’ or ‘stereotype,’ we contend that individuals have this perception because beautiful people indeed ‘are’ more intelligent. The conclusion that beautiful people are more intelligent follows from four assumptions. (1) Men who are more intelligent are more likely to attain higher status than men who are less intelligent. (2) Higher-status men are more likely to mate with more beautiful women than lower-status men. (3) Intelligence is heritable. (4) Beauty is heritable. If all four assumptions are empirically true, then the conclusion that beautiful people are more intelligent is ‘logically’ true, making it a proven theorem. We present empirical evidence for each of the four assumptions. While we concentrate on the relationship between beauty and intelligence in this paper, our evolutionary psychological explanation can account for a correlation between physical attractiveness and ‘any other’ heritable trait that helps men attain higher status (such as aggression and social skills).”

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