"Beauty Is the Promise of Happiness"?

Daniel Hamermesh () and Jason Abrevaya

No 17327, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: We measure the impact of individuals’ looks on life satisfaction/happiness. Using five data sets, from the U.S., Canada, the U.K., and Germany, we construct beauty measures in different ways that allow placing lower bounds on the effects of beauty. Beauty raises happiness: A one standard-deviation change in beauty generates about 0.10 standard deviations of additional satisfaction/happiness among men, 0.12 among women. Accounting for a wide variety of covariates, particularly effects in the labor and marriage markets, including those that might be affected by differences in beauty, the impact among men is more than halved, among women slightly less than halved.

JEL-codes: C20 I30 J10 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-bec, nep-hap, nep-lab and nep-ltv
Date: 2011-08
Note: LS
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Working Paper: "Beauty Is the Promise of Happiness"? (2011)
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