Short People Got No Reason To Live
Katherine Mangu-Ward | September 6, 2006, 11:59am
Economists have long been irritated by the weird fact that tall people have better jobs and earn more money. Many explanations have been offered, various forms of social and individual discrimination first among them. But two Princeton economists disagree: "In this paper, we offer a simpler explanation: On average, taller people earn more because they are smarter."
For both men and women, an increase in height of four inches is associated with an earnings premium of approximately 10 percent. ...An American man who is 6 feet 2 inches tall is 3 percentage points more likely to be an executive and 2 percentage points more likely to be a professional than is a man who stands 5 feet 10.
Childhood scores on intelligence tests show a correlation between height and cognitive ability, and this remains true throughout life, they report.
Yet more evidence that Edmund Burke was right: Prejudices can be useful--if short people are being discriminated against in the job market, it's only because (statistically speaking) they're dumb as a box of rocks.
For musical accompaniment to the post (and an explanation of the title), click here.
Mr. F. Le Mur | September 6, 2006, 12:22pm | #
In other words, I sense this as a function of nuture, not nature.
Sense away! "Sensing" is a lot easier than studying or researching, and you can always get the answer you want: your "religious beliefs."
(PS: You're incorrect.)
Here's the paper's abstract:
http://www.nber.org/papers/w12466
Stature and Status: Height, Ability, and Labor Market Outcomes
Anne Case, Christina Paxson
NBER Working Paper No. 12466
Issued in August 2006
NBER Program(s): AG CH HC HE LS
---- Abstract -----
It has long been recognized that taller adults hold jobs of higher status and, on average, earn more than other workers. A large number of hypotheses have been put forward to explain the association between height and earnings. In developed countries, researchers have emphasized factors such as self esteem, social dominance, and discrimination. In this paper, we offer a simpler explanation: On average, taller people earn more because they are smarter. As early as age 3 — before schooling has had a chance to play a role — and throughout childhood, taller children perform significantly better on cognitive tests. The correlation between height in childhood and adulthood is approximately 0.7 for both men and women, so that tall children are much more likely to become tall adults. As adults, taller individuals are more likely to select into higher paying occupations that require more advanced verbal and numerical skills and greater intelligence, for which they earn handsome returns. Using four data sets from the US and the UK, we find that the height premium in adult earnings can be explained by childhood scores on cognitive tests. Furthermore, we show that taller adults select into occupations that have higher cognitive skill requirements and lower physical skill demands.
+++
http://www.udel.edu/educ/gottfredson/reprints/
"Social Consequences of Group Differences in Cognitive Ability"
IQ’s predictive value ranges widely, depending on the outcome in question. For example, when averaged over several years, performance on standardized tests of academic achievement correlates about as highly with IQ as two IQ tests do with each other (over .8 on a scale of -1.0 to 1.0). In contrast, correlations with IQ are closer to .6-.7 for school marks, years of education completed, and longevity. They are about .5 with prestige level of occupation, .3 to .4 with income (the correlations rising with age), and .2 with law-abidingness.
MainstreamMan | September 7, 2006, 12:18pm | #
For a nice lay review of the issue you can go here.
http://www.wilderdom.com/personality/L4-1IntelligenceNatureVsNurture.html
It would indicate that Mr. F Le Mur is a little too pesimistic regarding the role of environment, but genetics is clearly the biggest factor.
" Herrstein and Murray (1994) argue that low intelligence causes low SES, rather than the other way around. So, according to these authors, while SES is correlated with IQ, it should be considered a consequence rather than a cause.
However, adoption studies seem to indicate that SES has a strong, causal effect on intelligence, e.g.:
"Well-controlled adoption studies done in France have found that transferring an infant from a family having low socioeconomic status (SES) to a home where parents have high SES improves childhood IQ scores by 12 to 16 points or about one standard deviation, which is considered a large effect size in psychological research." Wahlsten (1997, p. 76).
Several recent US studies have demonstrated improvements in children's IQ's by improving the lives of infants in disadvantaged circumstances.
These studies employed random assignment of children and families to treatment and control conditions.
These studies selected families with:
• low parental IQ
• low parental education
• minimal financial resources
Experimental group received:
• enriched, educational day care outside the home every weekday from 3 months to start of schooling
Control group received:
• nutritional supplements and pediatric medical care or crisis intervention but no educational day care
Even though the children returned to their home environment every day and spent holidays and weekends with their families (mostly unemployed, single mothers) in poverty-stricken neighbourhoods, there were large gains in IQ; almost as much as in the French studies previously mentioned.
Furthermore, the mean IQ of the enriched groups appeared to be quite typical of healthy American children. These children continued to show higher IQ scores than controls at age 12 (Wahlsten, 1997). Of course, in these American studies, SES and education were being manipulated. There is of course a strong correlation between SES and education in both directions."
One of side issues involving the comparison of races on intelligence is the artificial nature (genetically) of the racial categories used. For instance, genetic variability in people with dark skin on the contintent of Africa encompasses almost the entire range of variability in humans.
I would imagine the same could be said for short people.
