Size Matters! Body Height and Labor Market Discrimination: A Cross-European Analysis

Taller workers earn on average higher salaries. Recent research has proposed cognitive abilities and social skills as explanations for the height-wage premium. Another possible mechanism, employer discrimination,has found little support. In this paper, we provide some evidence in favor of the discrimination hypothesis. Using a cross section of 13 countries, we show that there is a consistent height-wage premium across Europe and that it is largely due to ccupational sorting. We show that height has a signi cant e ect for the occupational sorting of employed workers but not for the self-employed. We interpret this result as evidence of employer discrimination in favor of tallerworkers. Our results are consistent with the heoretical predictions of recent models on statistical discrimination and employer learning.Keywords: Height, Wage Premium, Discrimination, Cognitive Functions, Occupational Sorting     «

Taller workers earn on average higher salaries. Recent research has proposed cognitive abilities and social skills as explanations for the height-wage premium. Another possible mechanism, employer discrimination,has found little support. In this paper, we provide some evidence in favor of the discrimination hypothesis. Using a cross section of 13 countries, we show that there is a consistent height-wage premium across Europe and that it is largely due to ccupational sorting. We show that height...     »