Physical attractiveness and intergenerational social mobility

Alexi Gugushvili and Grzegorz Bulczak

Social Science Quarterly, 2023, vol. 104, issue 7, 1360-1382

Abstract: Objective Physical attractiveness is often studied in relation to various life outcomes, but there is a lack of research on its links to intergenerational educational, occupational, and income mobility. Individuals may use physical attractiveness as one of the channels for experiencing upward or avoiding downward social mobility. Methods Using data about 11,583 individuals from the United States National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, we contribute to the existing scholarship by investigating if physical attractiveness, assessed when individuals are around 15 years old, is an important predictor of intergenerational social mobility measured after 20 years. Results We find that physical attractiveness matters both for males’ and females’ intergenerational social mobility outcomes, but it is more important for males, even when childhood characteristics, such as various aspects of parental socioeconomic position, individuals’ health, a proxy for IQ, neighborhood conditions, and interviewers’ fixed effects, are accounted for using imputed data for observations with missing information. Across three measures of social mobility—education, occupation, and income—physically attractive males are more likely to be socially mobile than males of average attractiveness. Conclusion Physical attractiveness is an independent predictor of intergenerational social mobility outcomes regarding individuals’ educational, occupational, and income attainment.

Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/ssqu.13320

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:bla:socsci:v:104:y:2023:i:7:p:1360-1382

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.blackwell ... bs.asp?ref=0038-4941

Access Statistics for this article

Social Science Quarterly is currently edited by Robert L. Lineberry

More articles in Social Science Quarterly from Southwestern Social Science Association
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().