Beauty pays: Why attractive people are more successful

Beauty Pays: Why Attractive People Are More Successful

Volumn , Issue , 2011, Pages

  Hamermesh, Daniel S ^a,b  

^a UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN   (United States)

^b UNIVERSITY OF LONDON   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 84859210258     PISSN: None     EISSN: None     Source Type: Book    
DOI: None     Document Type: Book

References (149)

1. From the Consumer Expenditure Survey, as reported in http://www.bls.gov/cex/csxstnd.htm#2008, table 3.
2. Nancy Etcoff, Survival of the Prettiest: The Science of Beauty (New York: Doubleday, 1999)
3. Naomi Wolf, The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty Are Used Against Women (New York: Anchor Books, 1992).
4. Timur Kuran and Edward McCaffery, "Expanding Discrimination Research: Beyond Ethnicity and to the Web," Social Science Quarterly 85 (September 2004), pp. 713-30.
5. Daniel Hamermesh, "An Economic Theory of Suicide," Journal of Political Economy 82 ( January/February 1974), pp. 83-98
6. Mark Duggan and Steven Levitt, "Winning Isn't Everything: Corruption in Sumo Wrestling," American Economic Review 92 (December 2002), pp. 1594-1605
7. Jeff Biddle and Daniel Hamermesh, "Sleep and the Allocation of Time," Journal of Political Economy 98 (October 1990), pp. 922-43
8. Lena Edlund and Evelyn Korn, "A Theory of Prostitution," Journal of Political Economy 110 (February 2002), pp. 181-214.
9. David Buss, The Evolution of Desire: Strategies of Human Mating (New York: Basic Books, 1994).
10. http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/.
11. Own translation of Bernhard Schlink, Selbs Betrug (Zürich: Diogenes, 1994), p. 9.
12. The New Yorker, August 30, 2010, p. 36.
13. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/3429903.stm.
14. In 2008, its GDP per capita ranked it 143rd out of 180 countries studied by the International Monetary Fund: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)_per_capita.
15. Genesis, 29:17.
16. Angus Campbell, Philip Converse, and Willard Rodgers, Quality of American Life, 1971. Available from Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research, Study No. 3508.
17. Robert Quinn and Graham Staines, Quality of Employment Survey, 1977. Available from ICPSR, Study No. 7689.
18. Daniel Hamermesh and Amy Parker, "Beauty in the Classroom: Instructors' Pulchritude and Putative Pedagogical Productivity," Economics of Education Review 24 (August 2005), pp. 369-76.
19. Daniel Hamermesh, "Changing Looks and Changing Discrimination: The Beauty of Economists," Economics Letters 93 (2006), pp. 405-12.
20. Nancy Etcoff, Survival of the Prettiest, 1999.
21. Elaine Hatfield and Susan Sprecher, Mirror, Mirror . . . (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1986), p. 283.
22. Judith Langlois, Jean Ritter, Lori Roggman, and Lesley Vaughn, "Facial Diversity and Infant Preferences for Attractive Faces," Developmental Psychology 27 ( January 1991), pp. 79-84
23. Judith Langlois and Lori Roggman, "Attractive Faces Are Only Average," Psychological Science 1 (March 1990), pp. 115-21.
24. www.cosmeticsurgerybible.com/2008/news/uk-tops-tablefor-european-cosmetic-surgery-spending.
25. Soohyung Lee and Keunkwan Ryu, "Returns to Plastic Surgery in Marriage and Labor Markets," unpublished paper, University of Maryland-College Park, 2009.
26. For China, see http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/doc/2004-07/05/content_345598.htm.
27. Stories about the United States abound, for example, http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30112465/and More, April 2009, p. 78.
28. Jeff Biddle and Daniel Hamermesh, "Beauty, Productivity and Discrimination: Lawyers' Looks and Lucre," Journal of Labor Economics 16 ( January 1998), pp. 172-201.
29. Andrew Leigh and Jeff Borland, "Unpacking the Beauty Premium: Is It Looks or Ego?" unpublished paper, Australian National University, 2007
30. Daniel Hamermesh and Jeff Biddle, "Beauty in the Labor Market," American Economic Review 84 (December 1994), pp. 1174-94
31. Daniel Hamermesh, Xin Meng, and Junsen Zhang, "Dress for Success-Does Primping Pay?" Labour Economics 9 (October 2002), pp. 361-73
32. Soohyung Lee and Keunkwan Ryu, "Returns to Plastic Surgery in Marriage and Labor Markets," unpublished paper, University of Maryland-College Park, 2009
33. Barry Harper, "Beauty, Stature and the Labor Market: A British Cohort Study," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics 62 (December 2000), pp. 771-800.
34. Jason Fletcher, "Beauty vs. Brains: Early Labor Market Outcomes of High School Graduates," Economics Letters 105 (December 2009), pp. 321-25.
35. Peter Siegelman, "Law and Macroeconomics: Employment Discrimination over the Business Cycle," University of Southern California Law Review 66 (March 1993), pp. 709-45.
36. Philip Robins, Michael French, and Jenny Homer, "Non-Cognitive Traits and Labor Market Earnings of Young Adults," unpublished paper, University of Miami, 2009.
37. Susan Averett and Sanders Korenman, "The Economic Reality of the Beauty Myth," Journal of Human Resources 31 (Spring 1996), pp. 304-30.
38. John Cawley, "The Impact of Obesity on Wages," Journal of Human Resources 39 (Spring 2004), pp. 451-74
39. Christian Gregory and Christopher Ruhm, "Where Does the Wage Penalty Bite?" in Economic Aspects of Obesity, ed. Michael Grossman and Naci Mocan (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011).
40. Giorgio Brunello and Béatrice d'Hombres, "Does Body Weight Affect Wages: Evidence from Europe," Economics and Human Biology 5 (March 2007), pp. 1-19.
41. Nicola Persico, Andrew Postlewaite, and Dan Silverman, "The Effect of Adolescent Experience on Labor Market Outcomes: The Case of Height," Journal of Political Economy 112 (October 2004), pp. 1019-53.
42. Wenshu Gao and Russell Smyth, "Health, Human Capital, Height and Wages in China," Journal of Development Studies 46 (2010), 466-84.
43. Dan-Olof Rooth, "Obesity, Attractiveness, and Differential Treatment in Hiring," Journal of Human Resources 44 (Fall 2009), pp. 710-35.
44. Wall Street Journal, Friday-Saturday, November 26-27, 1993, page 1
45. quoting indirectly, Naomi Wolf, author of The Beauty Myth
46. John Pencavel, and by James Heckman and Mark Killingsworth, in Orley Ashenfelter and Richard Layard, eds., Handbook of Labor Economics, Vol. 1 (Amsterdam: North-Holland, 1986)
47. Richard Blundell and Thomas MaCurdy in Ashenfelter and David Card, eds., Handbook of Labor Economics, Vol. 3A (Amsterdam: North-Holland, 1999).
48. Arthur Goldsmith, Darrick Hamilton, and William Darity, "From Dark to Light: Skin Color and Wages among African-Americans," Journal of Human Resources 42 (Fall 2007), pp. 701-38.
49. Jeff Biddle and Daniel Hamermesh, "Beauty, Productivity and Discrimination: Lawyers' Looks and Lucre," Journal of Labor Economics 16 ( January 1998), pp. 172-201.
50. Abigail Pogrebin, Stars of David (New York: Broadway Books, 2005), p. 10.
51. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7581039.stm.
52. Lee Lillard, "The Market for Sex: Street Prostitution in Los Angeles," unpublished paper, RAND Corporation, 1995.
53. Paul Gertler, Manisha Shah, and Stefano Bertozzi, "Risky Business: The Market for Unprotected Commercial Sex," Journal of Political Economy 113 ( June 2005), pp. 518-50.
54. Raj Arunachalam and Manisha Shah, "The Prostitute's Allure: The Return to Beauty in Commercial Sex Work," unpublished paper, University of Michigan, 2009.
55. www.theeroticreview.com offers detailed information for members on the characteristics of a huge number of escorts, along with prices charged for various services.
56. Lena Edlund, Joseph Engelberg, and Christopher Parsons, "The Wages of Sin," unpublished paper, University of North arolina-Chapel Hill, 2009.
57. Mike Murphy, quoted by Maureen Dowd, New York Times, July 29, 2009.
58. Daniel Benjamin and Jesse Shapiro, "Thin-Slice Forecasts of Gubernatorial Elections," Review of Economics and Statistics 91 (August 2009), pp. 523-36.
59. Andrew Leigh and Tirta Susilo, "Is Voting Skin-deep? Estimating the Effect of Candidate Ballot Photographs on Election Outcomes," Journal of Economic Psychology 30 (February 2009), pp. 61-70.
60. Amy King and Andrew Leigh, "Beautiful Politicians," Kyklos 62 (November 2009), pp. 579-93.
61. Markus Klein and Ulrich Rosar, "Physische Attraktivität und Wahlerfolg: Eine Empirische Analyse am Beispiel der Wahlkreiskandidaten bei der Bundestagswahl 2002," Politische Vierteljahresheft 46 (2005), pp. 266-90.
62. Niclas Berggren, Henrik Jordahl, and Panu Poutvaara, "The Looks of a Winner: Beauty and Electoral Success," Journal of Public Economics 94 (February 2010), pp. 8-15
63. Cheng-Da Li and Ming-Ching Luoh, "Beauty Premiums in Politics-The Case of the 2004 Legislator Elections in Taiwan," Taiwan Economic Review 36 (March 2008), pp. 67-113.
64. Marcus Maurer and Harald Schoen, "Der Medial Attraktivitätsbonus: Wie die Physische Attraktivität von Wahlkreiskandidaten die Medienberichterstattung in Wahlkämpfen Beinflusst," Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie 62 ( June 2010), pp. 277-95.
65. Irene Frieze, Josephine Olson, and June Russell, "Attractiveness and Income for Men and Women in Management," Journal of Applied Social Psychology 21 ( July 1991), pp. 1039-57.
66. Anindya Sen, Marcel Voia, and Frances Woolley, "The Effect of Hotness on Pay and Productivity," unpublished paper, Carleton University, October 2010.
67. William J. Moore, Robert Newman, and Geoffrey Turnbull, "Do Academic Salaries Decline with Seniority?" Journal of Labor Economics 16 (April 1998), pp. 352-66
68. Daniel Hamermesh and Amy Parker, "Beauty in the Classroom: Instructors' Pulchritude and Putative Pedagogical Productivity," Economics of Education Review 24 (August 2005), pp. 369-76.
69. Bernd Süssmuth, "Beauty in the Classroom: Are German Students Less Blinded?" Applied Economics 38 (February 2006), pp. 231-38.
70. Daniel Hamermesh, "Changing Looks and Changing Discrimination: The Beauty of Economists," Economics Letters 93 (December 2006), pp. 405-12.
71. David Berri, Rob Simmons, Jennifer van Gilder, and Lisle O'Neill, "What Does It Mean to Find the Face of the Franchise?" unpublished paper, Southern Utah University, 2009.
72. Naci Mocan and Erdal Tekin, "Ugly Criminals," Review of Economics and Statistics 92 (February 2010), pp. 15-30.
73. Andrea Weber and Christine Zuhlehner, "Female Hires and the Success of Start-up Firms," American Economic Association, Papers and Proceedings 100 (May 2010), pp. 358-61.
74. Quoted in an interview reported at http://www.telegraph.co.uk/fashion/3302299/You-can-always-get-what-you-want.html.
75. Gerard Pfann, Jeff Biddle, Ciska Bosman, and Daniel Hamermesh, "Business Success and Businesses' Beauty Capital," Economics Letters 67 (May 2000), pp. 201-7.
76. De Tijd, July 28, 2000, p. 32.
77. Craig Landry, Andreas Lange, John List, Michael Price, and Nicholas Rupp, "Toward an Understanding of the Economics of Charity: Evidence from a Field Experiment," Quarterly Journal of Economics 121 (May 2006), pp. 747-82.
78. Michael Price, "Fund-Raising Success and a Solicitor's Beauty Capital: Do Blondes Raise More Funds?" Economics Letters 100 (September 2008), pp. 351-54.
79. Peter Kuhn and Kailing Shen, "Employers' Preferences for Gender, Age, Height and Beauty: Direct Evidence," unpublished paper, University of California-Santa Barbara, 2009.
80. Dan Devroye and Richard Freeman, "Does Inequality in Skills Explain Inequality in Earnings Across Advanced Countries?" National Bureau of Economic Research, Working Paper No. 8140, February 2001.
81. George Borjas, Labor Economics, 4th edition (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2008), pp. 277-79
82. Cash 8, no. 34 (August 23, 1996), p. 1.
83. Nicholas Rule and Nalini Ambady, "The Face of Success: Inferences from Chief Executive Officers' Appearance Predict Company Profits," Psychological Science 19 (2008), pp. 109-11.
84. Kevin J. Murphy, "Executive Compensation," in Handbook of Labor Economics, vol. 3B, ed. Orley Ashenfelter and David Card (Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1999), pp. 2485-2563.
85. Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, http://www.merriamwebster.com/dictionary.
86. Gary Becker, The Economics of Discrimination (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1957).
87. Edmund Phelps, "The Statistical Theory of Racism and Sexism," American Economic Review 62 (September 1972), pp. 659-61
88. Dennis Aigner and Glen Cain, "Statistical Theories of Discrimination in Labor Markets," Industrial and Labor Relations Review 30 ( January 1977), pp. 175-87.
89. Roland Fryer and Matthew Jackson, "A Categorical Model of Cognition and Biased Decision Making," Berkeley Electronic Journal Contributions to Theoretical Economics 8 (2008)
90. Barbara Bergmann, "The Effect on White Incomes of Discrimination in Employment," Journal of Political Economy 79 (March-April 1971), pp. 294-313.
91. Howard Gardner, Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences (New York: Basic Books, 1983), is perhaps the most well known.
92. Markus Möbius and Tanya Rosenblat, "Why Beauty Matters," American Economic Review 96 (March 2006), pp. 222-35.
93. James Andreoni and Ragan Petrie, "Beauty, Gender and Stereotypes: Evidence from Laboratory Experiments," Journal of Economic Psychology 29 (2008), pp. 73-93.
94. Sara Solnick and Maurice Schweitzer, "The Influence of Physical Attractiveness and Gender on Ultimatum Game Decisions," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes 79 (September 1999), pp. 199-215.
95. Michèle Belot, V. Bhaskar, and Jeroen van de Ven, "Beauty and the Sources of Discrimination," unpublished paper, University College-London, 2008.
96. "Wimbledon Puts Tennis Babes Front and 'Centre', " http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,529865,00.html.
97. Laurence Iannaconne, "Sacrifice and Stigma: Reducing Free-Riding in Cults, Communes and Other Collectives," Journal of Political Economy 100 (April 1992), pp. 271-91.
98. Alan Feingold, "Matching for Attractiveness in Romantic Partners and Same-sex Friends: A Meta-Analysis and Theoretical Critique," Psychological Bulletin 104 (September 1988), pp. 226-35
99. Marco Castillo, Ragan Petrie, and Maximo Torero, "Beautiful or White? Discrimination in Group Formation," unpublished paper, George Mason University, 2010.
100. New York Times, March 24, 2009, p. D1.
101. Feingold, "Matching for Attractiveness."
102. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/7567239.stm is among the many websites discussing this statement.
103. Susan Fisk, "Competition and Social Exchange: Female Attractiveness as an Object of Exchange in Dating Markets," unpublished paper, Department of Sociology, Stanford University, 2008.
104. Raymond Fisman, Sheena Iyengar, Emir Kamenica, and Itamar Simonson, "Gender Differences in Mate Selection: Evidence from a Speed Dating Experiment," Quarterly Journal of Economics 121 (May 2006), pp. 673-97.
105. Günter Hitsch, Ali Hortaçsu, and Dan Ariely, "Matching and Sorting in Online Dating," American Economic Review 100 (2010), pp. 130-63.
106. Hitsch, Hortaçsu, and Ariely, "What Makes You Click?" Mate Preferences and Matching: Outcomes in Online Dating," unpublished paper, University of Chicago, 2006.
107. Soohyung Lee, "Marriage and Online Mate-Search Services: Evidence from South Korea," unpublished paper, University of Maryland, 2009.
108. Abhijit Banerjee, Ester Duflo, Maitreesh Ghatak, and Jeanne Lafortune, "Marry for What? Caste and Mate Selection in Modern India," National Bureau of Economic Research, Working Paper No. 14958, 2009.
109. David Bjerk, "Beauty vs. Earnings: Gender Differences in Earnings and Priorities over Spousal Characteristics in a Match Model," Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization 69 (March 2009), pp. 248-59.
110. Feingold, "Matching for Attractiveness," which summarizes studies of spouses' looks. David Buss, The Evolution of Desire: Strategies of Human Mating (New York: Basic Books, 1994), discusses this more generally.
111. Liliana Alvarez and Klaus Jaffe, "Narcissism in Mate Selection: Humans Mate Assortatively, as Revealed by Facial Resemblance, Following an Algorithm of 'Self Seeking Like,' " Evolutionary Psychology 2 (2004), pp. 177-94.
112. Daniel Hamermesh and Frances Hamermesh, "Does Perception of Life Expectancy Reflect Health Knowledge," American Journal of Public Health 73 (August 1983), pp. 911-14.
113. Stephen Stigler, The History of Statistics: The Measurement of Uncertainty Before 1900 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1986)
114. Leon Kamin, The Science and Politics of IQ (New York: Halsted Press, 1974)
115. http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=CNG.33f98480869b474b6d10cafcf0b1de64.7c1&show_article=1.
116. http://snltranscripts.jt.org/84/84iwhitelikeeddie.phtml.
117. Alicia Munnell, Geoffrey Tootle, Lynn Browne, and James McEneany, "Mortgage Lending in Boston: Interpreting HMDA Data," American Economic Review 86 (March 1996), pp. 25-53.
118. Enrichetta Ravina, "Love and Loans: The Effect of Beauty and Personal Characteristics in Credit Markets," unpublished paper, New York University, March 2008
119. Jefferson Duarte, Stephan Siegel, and Lance Young, "Trust and Credit," unpublished paper, Rice University, November 2008.
120. Devin Pope and Justin Sydnor, "What's in a Picture? Evidence of Discrimination from Prosper.com," unpublished paper, Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, 2008.
121. http://www.sfgov.org/site/sfhumanrights_index.asp?id=4583.
122. Deborah Rhode, The Beauty Bias: The Injustice of Appearance in Life and Law (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010)
123. Discussion of the California Fair Employment and Housing Act, California Department of Consumer Affairs, is at (http://www.dca.ca.gov/publications/landlordbook/discrimination.shtml).
124. http://wallis.kezenfogva.iif.hu/eu_konyvtar/projektek/vocational_rehabilitiation/france/fra_rap/leg.htm.
125. Jennifer Fowler-Hermes, "Beauty and the Beast in the Workplace: Appearance-based Discrimination under EEO Laws," Florida Bar Journal 75 (April 2001).
126. Elizabeth Theran, "Legal Theory on Weight Discrimination," in Weight Bias: Nature, Consequences and Remedies, ed. Kelly Brownell, Rebecca Puhl, Leslie Rudd, and Marlene Schwartz (New York: Guilford Press, 2005), pp. 195-211.
127. James McDonald, "Civil Rights for the Aesthetically- Challenged," Employee Relations Law Journal 29 (Autumn 2003), pp. 118-29
128. Timothy Van Dyck, Edwards, Engell, Palmer and Dodge, July 17, 2008, http://www.employmentlawalliance.com/en/node/2393.
129. http://www.eeoc.gov/stats/charges.html.
130. http://www.radiancemagazine.com/kids_project/body_image.html.
131. For a discussion of these events, see http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/fea/lifetravel/stories/082708dnmetabercrombie.4027698.html.
132. Judith Hellerstein, David Neumark, and Kenneth Troske, "Wages, Productivity, and Worker Characteristics: Evidence from Plant-Level Production Functions and Wage Equations," Journal of Labor Economics 17 ( July 1999), pp. 409-46
133. John Haltiwanger, Julia Lane, and James Spletzer, "Wages, Productivity, and the Dynamic Interaction of Businesses and Workers," Labour Economics 14 ( June 2007), pp. 575-602.
134. Roland Fryer, "Guess Who's Been Coming to Dinner? Trends in Interracial Marriage over the 20th Century," Journal of Economic Perspectives 21 (Spring 2007), pp. 71-90.
135. Clark Nardinelli and Curtis Simon, "Customer Racial Discrimination in the Market for Memorabilia: The Case of Baseball," Quarterly Journal of Economics 105 (August 1990), pp. 575-95
136. Orley Ashenfelter and Timothy Hannan, "Sex Discrimination and Product Market Competition: The Case of the Banking Industry," Quarterly Journal of Economics 101 (February 1986), pp. 149-73.
137. Rhode, The Beauty Bias.
138. George Borjas, "The Substitutability of Black, Hispanic and White Labor," Economic Inquiry 21 ( January 1983), pp. 93-106.
139. Daniel Hamermesh and Frank Bean, eds., Help or Hindrance: The Economic Implications of Immigration for African- Americans (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1998)
140. Debra Umberson and Michael Hughes, "The Impact of Physical Attractiveness on Achievement and Psychological Well-Being," Social Psychology Quarterly 50 (September 1987), pp. 227-36
141. Daniel Hamermesh and Jason Abrevaya, " 'Beauty Is the Promise of Happiness'?", IZA Discussion Paper No. 5600, 2011.
142. Anthony Synott, sociologist, quoted in International Herald-Tribune, November 4, 2008.
143. S. Michael Kalick, Leslie Zebrowitz, Judity Langlois, and Robert Johnson, "Does Human Facial Attractiveness Honestly Advertise Health?" Psychological Science 9 ( January 1998), pp. 8-13.
144. Lisa DeBruine, Benedict Jones, John Crawford, Lisa Welling, and Anthony Little, "The Health of a Nation Predicts Their Mate Preferences: Cross-cultural Variation in Women's Preferences for Masculinized Male Faces," Proceedings of the Royal Society, Part B, 277 (August 2010), pp. 2405-10.
145. Richard Nelson, "A Theory of the Low-Level Equilibrium Trap in Underdeveloped Economies," American Economic Review 46 (December 1956), pp. 894-908.
146. John Dagsvik and Boyan Jovanovic, "Was the Great Depression a Low-Level Equilibrium?" European Economic Review 38 (December 1994), pp. 1711-29
147. Gary Becker and Kevin Murphy, "A Theory of Rational Addiction," Journal of Political Economy 96 (August 1988), pp. 675-700
148. Gary Becker, Michael Grossman, and Kevin Murphy, "An Empirical Analysis of Cigarette Addiction," American Economic Review 84 ( June 1994), pp. 396-418.
149. More, October 2008, p. 143.