LITERATURE REVIEW ON BEAUTY
Literature Review on Beauty Premium
James and Ragan (2008) postulate that beauty premium is not grounded on the actions of attractive people but the expectations of how the attractive people will behave. However the beauty disappears when the performance is known. Instead it becomes a penalty when the actions are known. In absence of knowledge about the performance of attractive people the cooperation by others will be high. However when information is known and where expected performance fails to show up then the cooperation is cut off. According to this work differences in wages are caused by how people view gender and beauty.
Samuel etal (2001) postulate that, personal characteristics like height, obesity and even beauty, which are seemingly irrelevant are often robust predictors of earnings. Daniel and Biddle( 1994) in their study postulate that for the United States and Canadian employees the expected hourly wage differences between men judged to be below average and those with above average looks was 14 percent of the expected wage, with the looks premium for women being around 9 percent..
Barry (1999) in his study postulate that, people who are assessed as unattractive or short have been experiencing a significant penalties in their earnings. In the study, pay gaps between the unattractive and attractive of 13.5 for females and 19.5 for males were observed to exist. Men and women who are obese were noticed to earn 12.8 and 25.9 respectively less than the sample mean earning of their gender. He asserts that women who are obese experience a pay penalty while the tall men receive a pay premium. The discriminative pay in terms of physical appearance results from employers. In some occupations performance is highly correlated to some physical traits. He asserts that the productivity of a worker in a certain occupation may be affected by the physical appearance. In such a case the employers will discriminatively pay their employees in terms of physical appearance.
Significant pay penalty for obesity is found to be experienced much more by women as opposed to men. However unattractiveness command a very large premium of 21 in manual occupations and the increased height is a disadvantage in the occupation. The study however concludes that the importance of physical appearance is to both males and females. The one assessed to be unattractive and those who are short experiences significant earning penalties
Martel and Biller (1987) have postulated that, the psychologists research asserts that social status and pay is associated with height among men. Sometimes qualities are ascribed to individuals erroneously by the employers.
Andrew (2007) found that labor market success is more affected by good looks than ego. This study postulate that, in spite of the perception that beauty has a strong relationship with employment and hourly wages, many people rating of their beauty has a weak correlation to the labor market outcomes. The study also postulates that, beauty premium may also result from employer based or customer based discrimination and productivity.
Nicola etal (2004) in analyzing height premium found that teenager height as opposed to adult height boosts income. The suggestion is that height promotes acquisition of non cognitive social skills such as confidence which greatly have an impact on wage increase.
Conclusion
The issue of beauty premium as a factor influencing wages differences cannot be overlooked. Attractive people and with tall stature are rewarded well as compared to unattractive and short stature people. Employers and customers discrimination are some of the factors that lead to differential wages based on beauty premium.