A recent study in Australia found that a person with a height of 6 feet is likely to make an extra $1,000 compared to a man with who is short 2 inches.
Taller people are seen as smarter and stronger,’ according to a recently published study in the Economic Record.
According to Andrew Leigh, co-author and research economist at the National University of Australia; if the average man with a height of about five feet and 10 inches grows taller by 2 more inches, he could earn $950 more which is almost as much a one year salary increase.
Other studies in the United States and the United Kingdom estimate incremental salary growth at nearly this amount per inch.
The truth is that taller people make more money, $789 more per inch per year, says Arianne Cohen, author of The Tall Book (Bloomsbury USA, June 2009). However, there is nothing physically measurable among tall people that explain this increase in income, but Cohen recently explained it in the radio show Marketplace. They are not more beautiful, they are not nicer but for some reason they have gotten a halo in society.
The taller they are the more money they make
Cohen’s number is partly based on an overview of four major American and British studies from 2003 by Timothy Judge, a professor of management at the University of Florida. The judge and his colleague concluded that a person with a 7 inch advantage would make an extra $5,525 a year.
Size was considered more important than gender in determining income although this statement is questionable, depending on how the gender pay gap is analyzed, and its importance does not diminish with age.
According to Judge if you take a career spanning more than 30 years, this makes the situation much worse; we are literally talking about extra hundreds of thousands of dollars in income for the taller person.
Being taller can generate trust, contribute to a person’s success and inspire people to gain more status and respect, Judge said.
Of course, all these studies produce averages. A shorter person could certainly outperform those taller than them and not all tall people are getting the benefits.
Cohen, who is 6 feet and 3 inches, says that the payroll bonus is awarded in part because taller people tend to show leadership.
Tall people usually play a leadership role at an early age because other children view them as more mature. In the workplace, when a person automatically takes on the role of leader, it’s very important for promotion.
Thus, the advantage of height could be attributed, to some extent, to the period of youth
In 2003 a study of 2000 American men found that their height at the age of 16 had a significant impact on their adult income, regardless of their final size. We found that two adults of the same age and height, who had different heights at age 16, were treated differently in the labor market. The taller adolescents earned more.
Being tall has some disadvantages
In his book, Cohen emphasizes that being tall can be more expensive, from the extra demand for food, to more expensive clothing, to the desire to own large objects like houses with high ceilings. Interestingly, It is worth noting that there is a growing debate about whether obese people should pay for excessive social and environmental impacts, but no one is demanding taxes on the tall ones.
It is believed that the benefits of height are rooted in our evolutionary process of deciding who was the most powerful.
According to Judge when people developed as a species and still lived in the jungle or in the plains, they attributed high leadership qualities to taller people because they thought they would be better able to protect them. – Although it was thousands of years ago, evolutionary psychologists claim that some of these ancient patterns still work on our perception.
