"Beauty Is the Promise of Happiness"? / Daniel S. Hamermesh, Jason Abrevaya.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Hamermesh, Daniel S.

Contributor:

National Bureau of Economic Research.

Abrevaya, Jason.

Series:

Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) no. w17327.

NBER working paper series no. w17327

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource: illustrations (black and white);

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2011.

Summary:

We measure the impact of individuals' looks on life satisfaction/happiness. Using five data sets, from the U.S., Canada, the U.K., and Germany, we construct beauty measures in different ways that allow placing lower bounds on the effects of beauty. Beauty raises happiness: A one standard-deviation change in beauty generates about 0.10 standard deviations of additional satisfaction/happiness among men, 0.12 among women. Accounting for a wide variety of covariates, particularly effects in the labor and marriage markets, including those that might be affected by differences in beauty, the impact among men is more than halved, among women slightly less than halved.

Notes:

Print version record

August 2011.