Are the effects of height on well-being a tall tale?

Kevin Denny

No 201530, Working Papers from School of Economics, University College Dublin

Abstract: Numerous papers have documented a positive association between height and good physical health and also with good economic outcomes such as earnings. A smaller number have argued for an association with well-being. In this paper, cross-country data from Europe is used to analyse whether individuals’ height is associated with higher or lower levels of life-satisfaction. In simple models there is a positive but concave relationship between height and life satisfaction. However it is shown that the results are quite sensitive to the inclusion of controls reflecting demographics, human capital and health status. Where effects do exist, it is predominantly at low to medium levels of height. There is also evidence of heterogeneity across countries.

Keywords: Height; Stature; Well-being; Life satisfaction; Health (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 24 pages
Date: 2015-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hap and nep-hea
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10197/7257 First version, 2015 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Are the Effects of Height on Well-Being a Tall Tale? (2017)
Working Paper: Are the effects of height on well-being a tall tale? (2015)
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:ucn:wpaper:201530

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from School of Economics, University College Dublin Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Nicolas Clifton ().