The College Admissions Contribution to the Labor Market Beauty Premium
David Ong (dvdong@gmail.com),
Man Xie and
Junsen Zhang
MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany
Abstract:
Beautiful people earn more. Surprisingly, this premium is larger for men than for women and is independent of the degree of customer contact. Overlooked is the possibility that beauty can influence college admissions. We explore this academic contributor to the labor market beauty earnings premium by sampling 1,800 social media profiles of students from universities ranked from 1 to 200 in China and the US. Chinese universities use only standardized test scores for admissions. In contrast, US universities use also grades and extracurricular activities, which are not necessarily beauty-blind. Consistent with beauty-blind admissions, student’s beauty is uncorrelated with the rank of their college in China. In the US, White men from higher ranked colleges are better-looking. As expected, the correlation is insignificant for White men who attended tech colleges and is highest for those who attended private colleges. We also find that White women and minorities of either gender are not better-looking at higher ranked colleges. Our evidence indicates a college admissions contribution to the labor market beauty premium for US White men, but not for students in China of either gender, White women, or minorities of either gender in the US, or for White men who attended technology colleges.
Keywords: beauty premium; labor market discrimination; college admissions; college athletics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I24 I26 J7 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020-01-31
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cna and nep-lma
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https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/98517/1/MPRA_paper_98517.pdf original version (application/pdf)
https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/103961/1/MPRA_paper_103961.pdf revised version (application/pdf)
https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/112757/1/MPRA_paper_112757.pdf revised version (application/pdf)
https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/100499/8/MPRA_paper_100499.pdf revised version (application/pdf)
Related works:
Journal Article: The college admissions contribution to the labor market beauty premium (2022)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pra:mprapa:98517
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