Children with physically attractive parents tend to earn more money over their lifetimes than children with average-looking or unattractive parents, a new study has found.
In other words, good-looking parents are more likely to produce wealthier children, the researchers write in “The Economic Impact of Genetic Physical Characteristics: Hot Parents, Rich Kids?” From the National Bureau of Economic Research. Specifically, children of parents perceived as attractive earn $2,300 more per year than children of average-looking parents.
“The aim was to ask the question, 'How much does my parents' beauty, or lack thereof, contribute to my beauty, and how much does that influence my economic activity?' '' said co-author Daniel S. Hamermesh, a labor economist. he spoke to CBS MoneyWatch about the study.
Hammermesh is also the author of the book “Beauty Costs Money: Why Attractive People Are More Successful.''
“Good-looking parents make more money. The impact of looks on money has been proven countless times,” Hamermesh added. “Their beauty influences their income and conveys their ability to earn that income to their children.”
Indeed, and as social scientists themselves admit, physical attractiveness does not determine economic fate, nor does it generally guarantee a high salary or professional success. The study was also limited in that it relied primarily on the mother's appearance, given the general lack of data on the father's appearance.
Meanwhile, gendered and evolving beauty standards complicate efforts to identify possible links between appearance and income. Still, people's perceptions of beauty “tend to be similar, despite the old idea that beauty is in the eye of the beholder,” Hammermesh said. “Yes, but we are very similar to each other.”
But in fact, enough research has shown that there is at least a correlation between a person's physical characteristics and, for example, their likelihood of getting promoted at work. In this context, as a new study points out, researchers have long documented the association between height, weight, and income.
“Differences in beauty are just one source of inequality among adults that stems in part from heritable physical characteristics,” the NBER study says.
Hamermesh and co-author Anwen Chan, a senior lecturer in economics at the University of Glasgow, write that a parent's appearance can directly and indirectly increase their child's income. First, and most simply, being born to attractive parents increases your chances of inheriting good looks, which can be useful in your career. Second, high-income parents can pass on more wealth to their children.
The study also seeks to pinpoint the extent to which appearance factors can create inequality. For a child with attractive parents, their income could increase by more than $100,000 over the course of a career. Again, this is not a hard and fast rule and is subject to many variables.
“But in general, if the parents are good-looking, their children are more likely to be good-looking,” Hammermesh says. “It's a matter of equality of opportunity.”