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You've suspected as much. Yes, the genetically blessed get more. Of everything. Romantically, professionally, they even have an easier time borrowing money. Not surprisingly, the beautiful are also more satisfied with their lives.
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Hamermesh comes to the conclusion that strict legal protection is required to prevent beauty discrimination.
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Psychologists say symmetry is the primary factor for determining beauty
When it comes to assessing what is pleasing to the eye, there is no need to adjust for culture, race, or age. An attractive person will look attractive to most people.
Truly unattractive women are 5% more likely than the truly lovely to opt not to work
It goes like this: if your earning potential is a major factor in the decision to work, you are more likely to enter, or re-enter, if your earning potential is good or better.
Self-selection leads those with less earning power to stay out of the work-force, and women rated in the lower half are more likely to stay home.
"The small percentage of those rated very unattractive were significantly and substantially more likely to have committed robbery, theft, or assault than were other youths.”
There is a certain wisdom in taking your ugly mug where it might actually be an advantage.
When the pretty work, do they always earn more, do better?
Over all, yes. In the jobs where looks actually improve prospects - entertainer, model, prostitute - an even bigger, yes.
Take the street hooker: the better looking ones earn, on average, 12% more than those deemed less so (variable such as services offered, etc, taken into account, of course). The higher-end escorts who are also above-average in looks earn even more than that.
And even when looks don't have to matter, they do. Among MBA grads examined in a small study, the better-looking men had higher starting salaries and faster earnings growth in their first ten years. For women, looks had little effect on their starting salaries, but did improve their earnings growth. Our author interprets this to mean, for women, there is a rising effect of beauty with age.
In the legal world, the specialties self-select (or people are offered entry level positions in) departments appropriate to appearance. The better looking grads disproportionately head to litigation while the decidedly bottom half of the looks-ladder head to tax law and the like. It would seem L.A. Law casting had it right.
Hire yourself up a whole bunch of unprepossessing folk and watch your profits soar
When Alan Greenspan was asked why, pre-Fed, his team at an economics consulting company was predominantly female he explained it thus:
In his field, women earned less, yet they did the job just as well. He hired women because he could get the same (or better) work while paying lower wages. Lower pay means a stronger and more profitable bottom line.
Start-ups and companies seeking a leaner, meaner bottom line behoove themselves to load up on the female, the ugly, and other less-paid types. A business philosophy that is just begging for a label we can all say out-loud without gagging.
Does it surprise you to know Santa Cruz is one of a few cities to explicitly protect the ugly?
Other cities with appearance-specific protections on the books are: Urbana, IL; Madison, WI; Howard County, MD.
Michigan and San Francisco have laws that protect from appearance discrimination only when based on weight and height.
Joining the party, Washington, D.C. recently enacted protections that make it illegal to “discriminate...on the basis of outward appearance for purposes of recruitment, hiring, or promotion.” Those protections also extend to rental housing, mortgage lending, and all other aspects of the housing market.