Beauty and the Labor Market Essay Example

while bad-looking people earn less than average looking people. Section five examines gender differences in the effects of beauty and concludes that these effects are slightly larger for men than women; however unattractive women are less likely to participate in the labour force and are more likely to be married to men with low human capital.Lastly, section six tests the three sources of wage differences by looks, discussed previously in section two, and concludes that there are earnings premia and penalties independent of occupation and that pure employer discrimination alone does not clarifies the role of beauty in the labour market; beauty may be productive in some occupations possibly as a result of consumer preferences. In conclusion, there is a positive correlation between beauty and wage-earnings.

The impacts of looks are higher for men than women; although, these gender differences are not significantly large. Also, there is some evidence that there is occupational sorting based on looks into occupations where looks are productive. Strengths: The research provided by the article is quite detailed and transparent. Along with the aids of six distinct sections, and a systematic breakdown on the basis of look-based employer discrimination the article concludes to the results between income attainments of labor force participants and their physical appearance.To isolate the effect of beauty and earning and to account for omitted-variable bias and other errors, the authors hold constant various demographic and labor-market characteristics and add various dummy variables and worker related vector of parameters to the estimates.

The data is then further digressed on the basis of gender, and occupations. This digression is critical to the overall result since it demonstrates some areas in

which the results could contradict the hypothesis presented. Furthermore, the article provides detailed insights on the premia and penalties associated with looks.To illustrate these insights Hamermesh and Biddle use three economic models: Becker-type (employer discrimination) model, customer/productivity discrimination model, and occupational crowding model, that provides great value to their study. Through analyzing data provided by three diverse broad surveys, each offering a variety of measures of earning, the article advocates that the finding of pay premia and penalties for looks is strong and accurate. These findings become even stronger when the authors synthesize the results from the three surveys.

A major contribution of this article is that it paves the way for future experiments and empirical studies. The conclusion presented on premia and penalties associated with looks in the article reflect the effect of beauty in all its characteristics, not just one of its many components, such as height, weight, or facial appearance. Future experiment and empirical studies can be built on the layout or techniques presented by this article and can be focused on examining the source of wage differentials and possible discrimination due to a specific characteristic of beauty or various other dimensions such as physical and mental disabilities.Same experiment can also be conducted on data from economies outside of North America to check whether the same premia and penalties of looks exist in other economies.

Critique

The article proposes that there is a positive relationship between beauty and labour market earnings and the impact of beauty is higher for men than women. However, the article fails to answer an important question: is the impact of beauty due to pure discrimination or productivity?According to the article

the impact of looks exist across all occupations; even in those occupations where it doesn't seem to be valuable possibly because beauty contributes to productivity in subtle and indirect ways. An attractive sales person might sell products more successfully than an unattractive one, while a bad looking candidate might have a harder time getting votes. Hence, if workers are able to produce more value for their employers by working better with clients, colleagues and customers due to their good-looks, one might argue that it is appropriate to reward beauty. The article examines the impact of looks on earnings using interviewers' ratings of respondents’ physical appearance. However, we need data on job performance to decide whether the wage differential is due to Becker-type discrimination stemming from employer/employee tastes or due to differences in productivity.

To do this we can examine a set of workers performing a specific task that requires a skill which is uncorrelated with physical attractiveness, while controlling for worker characteristics and confidence.An example of such an experiment could be paying workers to solve as many computer mazes as possible during a specific time period. Employers estimate the productivity of workers and set wages accordingly. The degree of visual and oral interaction is varied between the employers and workers during the experiment in order to isolate the effect of beauty during the wage negotiation process. To measure workers confidence, workers solve a practice maze and estimate their future productivity. Based on the empirical evidence resented by the article it seems reasonable to believe that employers will expect attractive workers to perform better than unattractive workers even after controlling for worker characteristics and confidence.

Various social-psychology studies

of beauty and human behavior show that factors such as confidence and physical-attractiveness play a huge part in labour market outcomes. The kernel of truth hypothesis states that beauty stereotype can become a self-fulfilling prediction. Favored or preferential treatment of workers in return builds their confidence as well as social and communication skills.Thus it seems reasonable to think that in our experiment the attractive workers will be considerably more confident and worker confidence in return will increase their wages.

This effect would be a true productivity effect. Furthermore, the article states that “Better looking people sort into occupations where beauty may be more productive” . With occupational sorting, attractive workers will be observed in greater proportions in occupations where beauty has an impact on their earnings, hence allowing such firms to give them wages at a competitive level and decreasing the marginal gains a worker can receive due to his or her beauty. Also, according to Hicks-Marshall law of derived demand the increased availability of substitutes for attractive people will cause the elasticity of labour demand to increase in such firms. Thus, beauty will impact earnings negatively in occupations with large proportions of attractive people, which contradicts the analysis of this article that states a positive relationship between beauty and labour market earnings independent of occupation.The article should take under consideration the dynamics of labour market to effectively analyze the effect of beauty on wage differentials within particular defined occupations.

In addition, estimated effects of physical-attractiveness could be biased because of measurement error. Assuming that respondents’ physical appearance was reported by trained interviewers systematic measurement error may still be considerable. Among both men and women in the

1981 Canadian quality of life study, roughly half were rated as average, and many more were rated above-average than were viewed as below average.According to authors this could be because Canadian interviewers might be less willing to describe someone as having below average looks. The negative effect of unattractiveness on wage is muted since below average workers having lower earnings are reported as above-average by the Canadian interviewers.

This error can be eliminated if the outline of physical appearance used by the interviewee is consistent and understood by all the interviewee’s.