The Tall and the Short of the Returns to Height / Michael Baker, Kirsten Cornelson.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Baker, Michael.

Contributor:

National Bureau of Economic Research.

Cornelson, Kirsten.

Series:

Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) no. w26325.

NBER working paper series no. w26325

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource: illustrations (black and white);

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2019.

Summary:

We revisit the US evidence of the association of height with socioeconomic status. We document non linear height profiles that are different for males and females. For males the profile is a spline function with a single node at mean height. Below mean height there is a sharply positive slope with height, while the function is roughly horizontal above the mean. For females the spline has two nodes. There is positive slope below mean height and in the top 10 percent of heights, and the profile is roughly horizontal between the mean and the 90th percentile. Remarkably, these stylized profiles describe the association of height with socioeconomic outcomes ranging from teenage cognitive scores to adult poverty, suggesting a common origin. We investigate some of the implications of these findings for analyses of the contributions of cognitive and non cognitive skills to the height profile in wages.

Notes:

Print version record

September 2019.