With a wasp waist like Heidi Klum’s you can boast in the office – and also earn more. Women with supermodel measurements have higher incomes than their more full-figured colleagues. This is the result of a study by the economist Prof. Marco Caliendo from the University of Potsdam and his colleague Markus Gehrsitz from the City University of New York.
The labor market researchers were above all surprised that it is not only overweight women who are paid less by their bosses but also those with a normal bodyweight. Both groups earned up to 12% less than the super-slim ones. The study indicates that earnings decrease steadily with increasing bodyweight. The researchers were able to rule out health as a primary cause of bodyweight as an impact on earnings, because their analysis also considered the health status of respondents.
A Body Mass Index (BMI) of 21.5 seems to meet the beauty standards employers consider worthy of promotion. The researchers examined the relationship between BMI – a criterion for determining if someone is overweight, underweight, or normal – and the subjects’ incomes and jobs. Their model indicates that women’s incomes peak at a BMI of 21.5. The ideal value corresponds to a body height of 1.70 m and a weight of about 62.5 kg, well below the clinical threshold for obesity. Is the office a catwalk where pounds decide your career prospects?
Marco Caliendo, Professor of Empirical Economics at the University of Potsdam since October 2011, confirms this but admits at the same time that a follow-up study is needed to more closely examine companies and the working environment. The “slimness premium” prevails at workplaces with customer contact, for example in gastronomy, sales, and service, i.e. in all branches where interaction with customers and coworkers plays a considerable role.
The present study of the Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA), which the two researchers have submitted for publication, evaluates data of 18,000 individuals. They used data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP). The SOEP, located at the German Institute for Economic Research, (DIW Berlin), is a representative panel survey already running for 30 years. Each year about 22,000 individuals from 12,000 households across Germany are sampled by the fieldwork organization TNS Infratest Sozialforschung, which collects data about earnings, employment, education, and health. Long-term social and societal trends can be observed because follow-up interviews are done with the same individuals. Data from the health survey, underway since 2002, is collected every other year. This allows conclusions to be drawn about discrimination due to age, gender, or skin color. This is a major subject, especially for labor market researchers like Caliendo. The present study, which consists of the 2002, 2004, 2006, and 2008 waves of the survey, does not touch on such serious discrimination that has to be sanctioned by lawmakers. To examine the relationship between career and weight the researchers focused on personality traits for better or worse employment performance. “Pay depends on various characteristics like education, work experience, or residential area. We also know that very open and extroverted people have better job chances than introverts. The BMI, on which we have concentrated, is only a minor factor.” It is nevertheless very interesting because research has rarely focused on the influence of bodyweight on one’s career.
How did Caliendo come across this aspect? “Articles in US-American literature point out that beauty leads to success on the labor market and overweight people are disadvantaged.” The 40-year old researcher wanted to get a clearer picture. After meticulously evaluating all data he can present explicit facts in his IZA discussion paper “Obesity and the Labor Market: A Fresh Look at the Weight Penalty”. One of the most convincing charts shows a steep income curve for women: up to a BMI of 21.5, a value that is considered attractive according to social standards. After this peak the curve falls immediately. The difference between the earnings of normal and obese people is not as significant as expected. Although obesity is generally considered a career killer, the relationship between body weight and earning opportunities requires a more differentiated analysis as proven by the IZA paper. What really counts is slimness. Even people of normal weight remain financially behind, at least in service jobs.
The study also evaluates data of men based on height, weight, and earnings. A newspaper summarized the results under the headline “Fat Belly, Fat Income”. Caliendo, himself athletic and slim, is smiling behind his desk. “This is not exactly the case,” says the father of two who keeps fit with football and jogging. More weight would not benefit him in his job although overweight men are more socially accepted and often associated with a certain status in academic literature. Ultimately, however, there is no proof of a relationship between weight and earnings in men, at least not in office jobs. His study shows that overweight men have better chances in physically demanding jobs. “Men with less muscular strength earn lower wages in blue-collar jobs. We have discovered that underweight men earn up to 8% less than normal or overweight ones,” the researcher says. This, however, applies only to blue-collar workers. It is probably muscle mass that is important for physical work. “SOEP measured this, too.” Caliendo describes mechanical devices you just have to squeeze: “Physical strength is measured through the pressure.” This makes it easy for companies to identify men with muscular strength. Those with a BMI of 23 spanning far into the obese range have the highest income, while underweight men can expect lower wages.
The overall result shows that men have a strength premium and women a slimness premium. “For women we expected an explicit overweight penalty but this was not fully confirmed. There is only this slimness premium“, so Caliendo. Although physical attractiveness clearly influences earnings, whether someone gets a job is not based on his or her body measurements.
Could the study lead to additional uncertainty among overweight women? “In these results I see no discrimination of overweight women, but in a previous study on unemployed men and women we did establish that overweight women have a lower self-esteem. They ask for a lower income during job interviews, while there are no significant differences in men.” However: Even though the researchers were able to determine a “slimness premium” in their data, they cannot say why this is so. How does this premium come about? “We need additional evidence, particularly reliable information from the working environment. The Socio-Economic Panel data do not suffice for that,” he explains. Much more will have to be investigated to get further relevant evidence. Only two things have been proven so far: Strong men earn more in production, slim women in the service sector. Klum’s physique, however, would not really pay off. With a BMI of 18 she falls below the desired measurements.
The Researcher
Prof. Marco Caliendo studied economics at the Goethe University in Frankfurt/Main and the University of Manchester. Since 2011 he has been Professor of Empirical Economics at the University of Potsdam and Program Director for the research area “Evaluation of Labor Market Programs” at the Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) in Bonn.
Contact
Universität Potsdam
Wirtschafts- und Sozialwissenschaftliche Fakultät
August-Bebel-Str. 89
14482 Potsdam
E-Mail: caliendouuni-potsdampde
Text: Heidi Jäger, Online-Editing: Agnes Bressa, Translation: Susanne Voigt
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