Stature and Life-Time Labor Market Outcomes: Accounting for Unobserved Differences

Petri Böckerman () and Jari Vainiomäki ()

No 7424, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: We use twin data matched to register-based individual information on earnings and employment to examine the effect of height on life-time labor market outcomes. The use of twin data allows us to remove otherwise unobserved ability and other differences. The twin pair difference estimates from instrumental variables estimation for genetically identical twins reveal a significant height-wage premium for women but not for men. This result implies that cognitive ability explains the effect of height on life-time earnings for men. Additional findings using capital income as the outcome variable suggest that discrimination against short persons may play a role for women.

Keywords: earnings; height; weight; BMI; height premium; employment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I10 J23 J31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 50 pages
Date: 2013-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dem, nep-lab, nep-lma and nep-ltv
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (20)

Published - published in: Labour Economics, 2013, 24 (1), 86-96

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp7424.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Stature and life-time labor market outcomes: Accounting for unobserved differences (2013)
Working Paper: Stature and life-time labor market outcomes: Accounting for unobserved differences (2012)
Working Paper: Stature and life-time labor market outcomes: Accounting for unobserved differences (2012)
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:izadps:dp7424

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().