Height differentiated Wage Premium in West Bengal, India: An Empirical Study

Poulomi Khasnobis and Soumyananda Dinda ()

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: Recently literature focuses on health status and labour market outcomes highlighting the height premium or height differentiated wage earning in labour market. Body height and weight of a worker, normally, represents his/her health status which is the basis of efficiency of a worker and it determines his/her productivity too. Literature has considered height, weight, age, education and experience, etc. as wage determining factors. Literature suggests that taller earns more than short heighted labour. Now, question arises weather height differentiated wage is true for all jobs or sector specific jobs only. This study attempts to answer these questions. Using primary data of six different job sectors, this paper investigates the relationship between physical health status and wage earning in West Bengal, India. Primary observation shows that taller earns more compared to their counter parts. This paper provides evidence that height differentiates wage income is significant in hard job sectors while education differential wage earning in soft job sectors. Worker’s height is statistically significant and positively affect on wage earning in hard working sector. Here, taller is the gainer in wage income earning and the estimated height premium is around 2% - 4%. However, backward or lower caste workers lose their wage income even in hard job sectors due to physical inefficiency that arises because of malnutrition or insufficient nutritional intake in the childhood.

Keywords: Height; Weight; Wage Earning; Wage Premium; Income; Short height; Taller; Reference Height; Labour’s Productivity; Health Policy; India; Nutritional Intake; Wage Determining Factor; West Bengal (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C21 I15 J13 J31 J78 Z13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017-02, Revised 2017-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hea
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/89600/1/MPRA_paper_89600.pdf original version (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pra:mprapa:89600

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany Ludwigstraße 33, D-80539 Munich, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Joachim Winter ().