Beauty pays but does investment in beauty?

Soohyung Lee

World of Labour, 2015, No 198, 198

Abstract: Being beautiful gives a person an advantage in many settings. Attractive people earn more and have an easier time getting hired. People spend large amounts of money on goods and services to enhance their beauty. Is this enhancement worth pursuing? Research suggests that the expected improvement in beauty from these goods and services is limited. Therefore, despite the large returns from having an attractive appearance, the cost-effectiveness of investment in beauty enhancement is ambiguous. For the average person, the monetary benefits of plastic surgery, medical treatments to increase height, and expensive clothing are not worth the cost.

Keywords: beauty premium; plastic surgery; physical attractiveness; discrimination; height (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D6 J3 J7 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://wol.iza.org/articles/beauty-pays-but-does-investment-in-beauty-1.pdf (application/pdf)
http://wol.iza.org/articles/beauty-pays-but-does-investment-in-beauty (text/html)

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:iza:izawol:journl:y:2015:n:198

Access Statistics for this article

World of Labour is currently edited by Pierre Cahuc

More articles in World of Labour from LISER Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Olga Nottmeyer ().