"Beauty Is the Promise of Happiness"?

No 5600, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: We measure the impact of individuals' looks on their life satisfaction or happiness. Using five data sets from the U.S., Canada, the U.K., and Germany, we construct beauty measures in different ways that allow putting a lower bound on the true effects of beauty on happiness. Personal beauty raises happiness, with a one standard-deviation change in beauty generating about 0.10 standard deviations of additional satisfaction/happiness among men, 0.12 among women. Accounting for a wide variety of covariates, including those that might be affected by differences in beauty, and particularly effects in the labor and marriage markets, the impact among men is more than halved, among women slightly less than halved. The majority of the effect of beauty on happiness may work through its effects on economic outcomes.

Keywords: life satisfaction; measurement error; looks (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C20 I30 J10 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 47 pages
Date: 2011-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hap, nep-hpe, nep-lab, nep-ltv and nep-soc
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Published - published in: European Economic Review, 2013, 64, 351-368

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Related works:
Journal Article: Beauty is the promise of happiness? (2013)
Working Paper: "Beauty Is the Promise of Happiness"? (2011)
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