"Beauty is the promise of happiness"?

Arbeitspapier

We measure the impact of individuals' looks on their life satisfaction or happiness. Using five data sets from the U.S., Canada, the U.K., and Germany, we construct beauty measures in different ways that allow putting a lower bound on the true effects of beauty on happiness. Personal beauty raises happiness, with a one standard-deviation change in beauty generating about 0.10 standard deviations of additional satisfaction/happiness among men, 0.12 among women. Accounting for a wide variety of covariates, including those that might be affected by differences in beauty, and particularly effects in the labor and marriage markets, the impact among men is more than halved, among women slightly less than halved. The majority of the effect of beauty on happiness may work through its effects on economic outcomes.

Angaben zum Objekt

• Sprache: Englisch

Verweise und Beziehungen

• Erschienen in: Series: IZA Discussion Papers ; No. 5600

Klassifikation und Themen

• Klassifikation: Wirtschaft ; Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty: General ; Demographic Economics: General ; Single Equation Models; Single Variables: General
• Thema: life satisfaction ; measurement error ; looks ; Zufriedenheit ; Menschen ; Schätzung ; USA ; Großbritannien ; Kanada ; Deutschland

Beteiligte, Orts- und Zeitangaben

• Ereignis: Geistige Schöpfung
• (wer): Hamermesh, Daniel S. ; Abrevaya, Jason
• Ereignis: Veröffentlichung
• (wer): Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA)
• (wo): Bonn
• (wann): 2011

Weitere Informationen

• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/51918
• URN: urn:nbn:de:101:1-201104134243
• Letzte Aktualisierung: 10.03.2025, 11:41 MEZ