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Shape Matters: Evidence from Machine Learning on Body Shape-Income Relationship

Suyong Song, Stephen S. Baek

arXiv 16 Jun 2019 · Econometrics · publishedPLoS ONE (2021) · 7 citations (OpenAlex)

arXiv:1906.06747 · PDF · DOI · OpenAlex · Extracted main text

Abstract

We study the association between physical appearance and family income using a novel data which has 3-dimensional body scans to mitigate the issue of reporting errors and measurement errors observed in most previous studies. We apply machine learning to obtain intrinsic features consisting of human body and take into account a possible issue of endogenous body shapes. The estimation results show that there is a significant relationship between physical appearance and family income and the associations are different across the gender. This supports the hypothesis on the physical attractiveness premium and its heterogeneity across the gender.

Citation extraction

32
references
42
in-text mentions
32
distinct cited
5
self-citations
12,883
main-text words

appendix boundary found by appendix_command · 75% of the source is main text. Read the extracted text to check this.

Most heavily cited references

The works this paper leans on most, across its whole bibliography — not restricted to papers in our corpus. Ranked by composite intensity, which combines how often a work is mentioned, how many sections mention it, and how much of that falls in the main text rather than the appendix.

ReferenceIntensityMentionsSectionsMain text
1Case, A. and Paxson, C (2008) Stature and status: Height, ability, and labor market outcomes0.84333100%
2Cawley, J (2004) The impact of obesity on wages0.84333100%
3Persico, N., Postlewaite, A., and Silverman, D (2004) The effect of adolescent experience on labor market outcomes: The case of height0.84333100%
4Bollinger, C (1998) Measurement error in the current population survey: A nonparametric look0.64422100%
5Hamermesh, D. and Biddle, J (1994) Beauty and the labor market0.64422100%
6Hu, Y. and Schennach, S (2008) Instrumental variable treatment of nonclassical measurement error models0.64422100%
7Lundborg, P., Nystedt, P., and Rooth, D.-O (2014) Height and earnings: The role of cognitive and noncognitive skills0.64422100%
8Baek, S. and Lee, K (2012) Parametric human body shape modeling framework for human-centered product design self0.40511100%
9Baek, S.-Y (2013) Nonlinear Analysis of the Space of Human Body Shapes and Its Application to Parametric Human Modeling System self0.40511100%
10Böckerman, P. and Vainiomäki, J (2013) Stature and life-time labor market outcomes: Accounting for unobserved differences0.40511100%

Showing the top 10 of 32 scored citations.