Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/51918 
Year of Publication: 
2011
Series/Report no.: 
IZA Discussion Papers No. 5600
Publisher: 
Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA), Bonn
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.
Subjects: 
life satisfaction
measurement error
looks
JEL: 
I30
J10
C20
Persistent Identifier of the first edition: 
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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