Oct 14 2008
Do attractive people make more money?
Isn’t it enough that beautiful people are beautiful? Shouldn’t it be enough that they have their looks going for them and puts them ahead of the rest of us? New studies that I’ve read are now saying that attractive people also make more money.
Accroding to studies by Daniel Hamermesh and Jeff Biddle that have been published in the Journal of Labor Economics, being attractive can lead to more money in your hands. Attractive people have about 5% higher hourly wage that people with an ok look. Those people, on the other hand, have about 9% higher hourly wage than people who have an everyday, normal look. This means that if the person with the ok look made $40,000, the decent looking people would only make $36,400 while the attractive people would make $42,000. People with normal look are also less likely to be promoted to a higher position.
Why is this? Are attractive people more intelligent? Are they smarter? What is it? It’s still preatty unclear whether is has to do with intelligens or looks but some researches say that, for example, good looking teachers have higher valuations than ’ugly’ collegues. Some people say that you recognize a person’s looks and social skills before you see the comtetence.
There are people, however, who say that there are no connections between looks and getting better jobs that pay more. Richard St. John, the author of the book “Stupid, Ugly, Unlycky, and Rich”says that looks might help you get a date, but that’s about it.
I think this discussion is very interesting and very inportant, especially in today’s society where men make more money than women. This adds a new dimension to the problem of unequal distribution of salaries at the workplace.
What do you think? Do you think that attractive people make more money?






….not just attractive…but slim…and tall….and that has pretty much been verified, at least in the business world…
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