The Olympics are not the only place where height plays a role. In poor countries and rich countries alike, taller people do earn more. It has long been debated whether this is because height really matters for productivity— it could be discrimination against shorter people, for example. But a recent paper by Anne Case and Chris Paxson made some progress in nailing down what explains this relationship. They show that in the United Kingdom and the United States, the effect of height is entirely accounted for by differences in IQ: When we compare people who have the same IQ, there is no relationship between height and earning. 22 They interpret their findings as showing that what matters is good nutrition in early childhood: On average, adults who have been well nourished as children are both taller and smarter. And it is because they are smarter that they earn more. Of course, there are many not-so-tall people who are very bright (because they have reached the height they were meant to reach), but overall, tall people do better in life, because they are visibly more likely to have reached their genetic potential (both in height and in intelligence).
Banerjee, Abhijit, and Esther Duflo. Poor Economics : A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty, PublicAffairs, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central,
http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/unc/detail.action?docID=876489.
Created from unc on 2018-05-20 17:19:32.
