What is it about?
It is well established that physically attractive individuals get paid better (so-called “beauty premium”) across different occupations and countries. Our study investigates the extent to which parents pass their looks to their children, and further how this heritability influences economic outcomes and perpetuate intergenerational inequality. The key findings are: • Beauty is partially heritable: With data from three separate datasets, we narrowed down the heritability of beauty around 0.25 (with 1 being perfectly heritable); • This heritability contributes to inequality: Adult children of attractive parents earn on average about $2,200 more annually than children of average-looking parents.
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Photo by Alexander Grey on Unsplash
Why is it important?
Understanding the consequences of the beauty premium allows us to approach intergenerational mobility from new angles, offering insights into how biology can have profound economic and social impacts across generations.
Perspectives
Genetic lottery can be unfair. Beauty is one of the many random things we get in life, same as in that some people are born with great musical talent, some are better at sports, and some are more intelligent. It may be unfair that you get good looks while I don’t, but we all have our own advantage and luck in different areas, and bad luck can be also changed with effort. So the message is, find our unique advantage, put in effort, and run with it.
Dr Anwen Zhang
University of Glasgow
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Human beauty illustrates the economic impact of heritable physical traits, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, February 2025, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2418424122.
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