A loyal MR reader asks:
We know women make less than men. We know shorter people make less than taller people. How much of the first is explained by the second?
Not much. Short men have less self-esteem (recall that male height at the time of high school predicts earnings better than adult male height), but short women, when they are young, feel no worse about themselves than do tall women. Next?
#28 in a series of 50.
The wage gap between men and women can largely be explained by a combination of factors such as: women tend to pursue fields that provide less money and more psychological pay, women are more likely to leave the work force to raise children, men are more willing to change jobs (giving up job security for pay) and a whole host of items that point to one thing. Women make less money because they value money less than men do (and ostensibly value other things like family, society, security and personal connections more).
Are you saying that women coming out of high-school all have low self-esteem and that hinders their money-making potential throughout their lifetimes?
Michael Tinker – It was his equally well nourished peers who gave him the nickname ‘dumb ox,’ so he was tall even by elite standards. Better nutrition results in increased height, for sure, Robert Fogel’s ‘Escape from hunger and premature death’ shows in autistic detail how height has been rising over the last century with better health&nutrition. But at some point the increases stop, and so to reach the upper bands of the height distribution nutrition is not enough, you need the genes.
We’re missing the point of the original question. To me the question says, if short people make less than tall people then it’s natural that women make less than men, because they’re shorter.
Yes, but Professor Cowen answered that. It’s a matter of correlation versus causation.
He argues that the causation is that people with lower self-esteem make less money. Men who are shorter have lower self-esteem, but women who are short do not, since being short for a woman is considered attractive. Therefore, men who are short make less money than men who are tall, but women who are short do not make less money than women who are tall. However, since men are half the population, there is an overall correlation between height and income.
Under this argument, it is far from natural to conclude that the reason women make less is because they’re shorter. Under this analysis, it does not follow at all, though it may follow from other reasons (such as personal choices, etc.)
Tyler missed the important point. Self-esteem might be equal for women, but natural feeling of deserving to lead is not naturally felt by women, mostly because they are shorter. This submissiveness means lower workplace productivity.
Not much. Short men have less self-esteem (recall that male height at the time of high school predicts earnings better than adult male height), but short women, when they are young, feel no worse about themselves than do tall women. Next?
Your link under ‘not much’ contradicts the theory implied in your very next sentence. You just sort of brushed off an interesting question. First of all there is an intelligence gap in America between men and women, both at the mean and, more significantly, at the tails of the IQ distribution. How much of the earnings gap can be attributed to this?
Second does this have anything to do with the height difference? Do men and women matched for height have more similar IQs?
Larger brains are more intelligent (PDF), so it is conceivable that this has some relationship to both the height differences and the sex differences.
My understanding is that height is not correlated with income among women. If that is true, height is unlikely to explain any difference between men and women.
I’ve never understood the height and IQ thing. If the study shows it to be true than maybe it is, but it contradicts all my life’s evidence. I am very short for a white man and have a very high IQ. I went to what was at the time the best magnet school in the country as measured by test results and competitions, and the white males were blatantly, almost hilariously shorter than average. The american born asians also seemed to be shorter than the ABA average although I’m less certain of that. Whenever I went to math competitions it seemed like everywhere there were short white guys. Maybe it’s a combination of poor perception by me, and some key exceptions to the correlation.
As for self-esteem, it’s obviously tough for a short guy, but I do alright… going to a nerd high school probably helped a lot. Being blessed with a high IQ helps too! I’m going to test out the CEO theory also, or at least CFO… I’ll probably get there by 35. I’ve never personally noticed discrimination against me at work. My business mentor of sorts is a very intelligent 5’7 bald Italian guy who just cashed out of his CEO position (although he cheated and built his own company).
Here is wiki on ‘heightism’:
“A survey of Fortune 500 CEO height in 2005 revealed that they were on average 6 feet tall, which is 3 inches taller than the average American man. Fully 30% of these CEOs were 6 foot 2 inches tall or more; in comparison only 3.9% of the overall United States population is of this height. Equally significantly, similar surveys have uncovered that less than 3% of CEOs were below 5†²7†³ in height, and that 90% of CEOs are of above average height.”
“Of the 43 U.S. Presidents, only five have been more than an inch below average height. Moreover, of the 54 US presidential elections only 13 have been won by the shorter candidate, ”
Bill – When it comes to height there are other nutritional factors to consider. I would guestimate on the basis of IQ data that a good proportion of the ‘short white guys’ at those math comps were Ashkenazi Jews. In the Ashkenazi case nutrition may be a factor in a shorter average height, especially a possible low calcium intake due to a lactose intolerance rate of 60-80%. Asians, for example, are 95-100% lactose intolerant, and this is one reason why Japanese people still average 10cm shorter than Europeans despite an equal abundance of food. I would imagine that, on average, high IQ people within those ethnic groups would be tall group standards, although I have no evidence for that.
My understanding is that height is not correlated with income among women. If that is true, height is unlikely to explain any difference between men and women
It isn’t true. Women differ in height by income group. Looking only at siblings from the same family, each inch of height is worth a 3.5–5.5 percent increase in women’s wages (PDF).
Leadership has always been correlated with physical size. But there was usually a short (Ashkenazi Jew?) guy behind the big lump. And it was the short guy with brains who pulled the strings and made good money too.
Hitler, Mussolini and Stalin were all (comparatively) little guys. Does this mean that in order for a short guy to make it in a leadership position, he has to be evil? Of course, none of them had Jewish advisors.
First of all there is an intelligence gap in America between men and women, both at the mean and, more significantly, at the tails of the IQ distribution. How much of the earnings gap can be attributed to this?
GAAAAAAH.
1. You don’t even have to go past the abstract of the linked article to refute the “intelligence gap” claim, Jason Malloy.
“Males have only a marginal advantage in mean levels of g (less than 7% of a standard deviation) from the ASVAB and AFQT, but substantially greater variance.”
In my world, a “difference” of less than 7 percent of a standard deviation between two samples isn’t a difference.
I think it is back to the drawing board. How about selection effects, namely the disturbing tendencies for (a) poor black males to die young and violently or to be incarcerated and so not part of the workforce; (b) poor females to bear children at an early age and to drop out of the educational system prematurely, leading to dramatically reduced lifetime earnings potential. These are just two of a variety of selection mechanisms that undoubtedly affect the gender distribution of income quite independent of height.
You don’t even have to go past the abstract of the linked article to refute the “intelligence gap” claim
No, actually, the abstract, and the paper, report exactly what I said: a difference at the mean, larger differences at the tails.
There are a number of other datasets with the same finding.
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