Beauty, body size and wages: Evidence from a unique data set

Abstract

We analyze how attractiveness rated at the start of the interview in the German General Social Survey is related to weight, height, and body mass index (BMI), separately by gender and accounting for interviewers' characteristics or fixed effects. We show that height, weight, and BMI all strongly contribute to male and female attractiveness when attractiveness is rated by opposite-sex interviewers, and that anthropometric characteristics are irrelevant to male interviewers when assessing male attractiveness. We also estimate whether, controlling for beauty, body size measures are related to hourly wages. We find that anthropometric attributes play a significant role in wage regressions in addition to attractiveness, showing that body size cannot be dismissed as a simple component of beauty. Our findings are robust to controlling for health status and accounting for selection into working. JEL Classification Codes: J01, J10. Keywords: Attractiveness, Body Mass Index, Height, Weight, Wages. * Quintana-Domeque (corresponding author): University of Oxford, Department of Economics, Oxford, OX1 3UQ, United Kingdom; climent.quintana-domeque@economics.ox.ac.uk. We thank Damian Clarke, Tel Enyecu, Marco Gonzalez-Navarro, David Margolis, Daniele Paserman, Simon Quinn, Curtis Simon, one anonymous referee and seminar participants at Alacant, IFS, Oxford, PSE and TSE for useful comments. The usual disclaimers apply.

The thinner the better: Evidence on the internalization of the slimness ideal in Chinese college students

“…Not everybody agrees that attractiveness is equal to women's fertility (Pawlowski, Boothroyd, Perrett, & Kluska, ), but no one denies the advantage that attractive women have in mate selection (Buss, ). Due to the importance of BMI to women's attractiveness and to other important domain (Oreffice & Quintana‐Domeque, ), it is understandable why a majority of women in the United States, Italy, Iran, and China would choose a body with smaller BMI (Alipour, Abbasalizad Farhangi, Dehghan, & Alipour, ; Neighbors & Sobal, ; Wang et al, ; Zaccagni et al, ), if given free choice. Oreffice and Quintan‐Domeque () found that BMI was negatively correlated to female attractiveness, while female attractiveness was positively correlated to hourly wage.…”

“…Due to the importance of BMI to women's attractiveness and to other important domain (Oreffice & Quintana‐Domeque, ), it is understandable why a majority of women in the United States, Italy, Iran, and China would choose a body with smaller BMI (Alipour, Abbasalizad Farhangi, Dehghan, & Alipour, ; Neighbors & Sobal, ; Wang et al, ; Zaccagni et al, ), if given free choice. Oreffice and Quintan‐Domeque () found that BMI was negatively correlated to female attractiveness, while female attractiveness was positively correlated to hourly wage. Willingness to be thin is a common phenomenon in women across different cultures, which prompts us to search for an explanation from an evolutionary perspective.…”

Deprivation or Discrimination? Comparing Theories of the Reverse Income-Obesity Gradient in the U.S. and South Korea

“…Such theories reverse the direction of causation and posit that anti-fat discrimination in hiring and marriage can lead individuals with higher BMI to be selected into lower-paying jobs and lower-income households (Cawley 2004;Conley and Glauber 2007;Glass, Hass, and Reither 2010;Mason 2012;Malcolm and Kaya 2016;Oreffice and Quintana-Domeque 2016).…”

Partner–objectification in romantic relationships: A dyadic approach

“…We statistically controlled for several variables. Body mass index (BMI; assessed by selfreports of weight and height) was included because BMI is linked to opposite-sex ratings of attractiveness and objectification (Holland & Haslam, 2013;Oreffice & Quintana-Domeque, 2016). Additionally, given prior research that both age (Gorchoff, John, & Helson, 2008;King & Scott, 2005) and relationship duration (Sheets, 2014;Sternberg, 1986) are associated with relationship quality, we controlled for these variables.…”

“…The current study controlled for BMI because lower BMI is linked to opposite-sex ratings of attractiveness and greater objectification (Holland & Haslam, 2013;Oreffice & Quintana-Domeque, 2016). Despite this, BMI is a rough measure of physical appearance because it does not account for differences in build and does not distinguish fat from muscle.…”