Physical attractiveness helps explain social mobility

See Physical attractiveness and intergenerational social mobility by Alexi Gugushvili & Grzegorz Bulczak in Social Science Quarterly.  (Hat tip: Rolf Degen). Excerpt: 

"Abstract

Objective

Physical attractiveness is often studied in relation to various life outcomes, but there is a lack of research on its links to intergenerational educational, occupational, and income mobility. Individuals may use physical attractiveness as one of the channels for experiencing upward or avoiding downward social mobility.

Methods

Using data about 11,583 individuals from the United States National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, we contribute to the existing scholarship by investigating if physical attractiveness, assessed when individuals are around 15 years old, is an important predictor of intergenerational social mobility measured after 20 years.

Results

We find that physical attractiveness matters both for males’ and females’ intergenerational social mobility outcomes, but it is more important for males, even when childhood characteristics, such as various aspects of parental socioeconomic position, individuals’ health, a proxy for IQ, neighborhood conditions, and interviewers’ fixed effects, are accounted for using imputed data for observations with missing information. Across three measures of social mobility—education, occupation, and income—physically attractive males are more likely to be socially mobile than males of average attractiveness.

Conclusion

Physical attractiveness is an independent predictor of intergenerational social mobility outcomes regarding individuals’ educational, occupational, and income attainment."

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