This study uses data from the 11 waves of the U.S. Study of Early Child Care and
Youth Development 1991-2005, following children from ages 6 months
through 15 years. Observers rated videos of them, obtaining measures of
looks at each age. Given their family income, parents’ education,
race/ethnicity and gender, being better-looking raised subsequent
changes in measurements of objective learning outcomes. The gains imply a
long-run impact on cognitive achievement of about 0.04 standard
deviations per standard deviation of differences in looks.
Similar
estimates on changes in reading and arithmetic scores at ages 7, 11 and
16 in the U.K. National Child Development Survey 1958 cohort show larger
effects. The extra gains persist when instrumenting children’s looks by
their mother’s, and do not work through teachers’ differential
treatment of better-looking children, any relation between looks and a
child’s behavior, his/her victimization by bullies or self-confidence.
Results from both data sets show that a substantial part of the economic
returns to beauty result indirectly from its effects on educational
attainment. A person whose looks are one standard deviation above
average attains 0.4 years more schooling than an otherwise identical
average-looking individual.
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