BEAUTY IS THE PROMISE OF HAPPINESS*?

Daniel S. Hamermesh and Jason Abrevaya**

*Stendhal (Marie-Henri Beyle), La beaut n'est que la promesse du bonheur, De lAmour, Ch. 17, 1822.

**Sue Killam Professor in the Foundations of Economics, University of Texas at Austin, and professor in economics, Royal Holloway University of London, IZA and NBER; Fred Hofheinz Professor of Economics, University of Texas at Austin. The authors are listed in ascending order of their looks. They thank Joel Waldfogel for inspiring this project and Katrin Auspurg, George Borjas, Chris Bollinger, Gbor Kzdi, Markus Klemm, Andrew Oswald, Karl Scholz, two anonymous referees, and participants at several universities and institutes for helpful comments. They are also grateful to Sean Banks, Steven Boren, and David Northrup for help in obtaining the older data sets.

ABSTRACT We measure the impact of individuals looks on life satisfaction and happiness. Using six data sets, from Canada, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States, we construct beauty measures in a number of different ways. Beauty raises happiness: A one standard-deviation change in beauty generates about 0.08 standard deviations of additional satisfaction/happiness among men, 0.07 among women. The finding is robust to a rare opportunity to measure it using an instrumental variables approach. Accounting for a wide variety of covariates, particularly educational, marital, and labor-market outcomes that might be affected by beauty, the gross effects are roughly halved, with small reductions arising from the impact of beauty on monetary outcomes.

I. Introduction While economists have studied happiness for several generations (Scitovsky, 1976; Easterlin, 2010), interest in it has burgeoned in the last 15 years. The Frey and Stutzer (2002) survey captured part of the literature, but there has been a continuing outpouring of research on happiness from an economic viewpoint (e.g., Clark et al, 2008; Stevenson and Wolfers, 2008; Kahneman and Deaton, 2010; Oswald and Wu, 2011). Much of the analysis focuses on measuring the short- and long-run effects of changes in income on happiness, but the mutual relationship between happiness and other outcomes that are at least partly economically determined (divorce, fertility and others) has also been discussed. At the same time a smaller, but also burgeoning literature on the effects of beauty on various outcomes has emerged (e.g., Hamermesh and Biddle, 1994; Mbius and Rosenblat, 2006; Benjamin and Shapiro, 2009; Mocan and Tekin, 2010; Hitsch et al, 2010). The general issue is how human beauty determines outcomes in various markets and shifts the distribution of surpluses among participants in those markets. For example, studies have looked at how beauty affects earnings, alters occupational choice, and influences marital bargaining. Here we put the two literatures together, examining how happiness is affected by beauty. Some psychologists have correlated subjects happiness and their self-assessed beauty, but that approach seems flawed. Others have compared the happiness of college students to observers ratings of their looks (Mathes and Kahn, 1975; Diener et al, 1995), or examined simple averages of several measures of happiness among a random sample of people whose beauty was rated by interviewers (using one of the data sets we use, Umberson and Hughes, 1987). Our central question is how beauty affects happiness and how much of the effect, if any, works through monetary measures. The analysis should not merely reflect the idiosyncrasies of measuring the subjective concepts of happiness and human beauty. These differences in how satisfaction is measured may give rise to different biases in the estimated relationships of satisfaction to other variables, such as appearance. For that reason we use six sets of surveys from four different countries, which we discuss in Section II. The measures of satisfaction/happiness differ across surveys, and even within a given survey different measures are

generated. Given evidence of the sensitivity of responses to questions about happiness to the framing and scaling of the questions (Conti and Pudney, 2011), replicating the results using variously constructed measures should minimize concerns over survey-based idiosyncrasies in eliciting responses about happiness. Were it possible to find a convincing instrument for beauty or to undertake some experiment that altered beauty, we would take one of those analytical approaches to studying happiness. The former is not generally possible, although one of our data sets does allow the creation of an instrument; and the latter would not seem ethical. Instead, we take advantage of the fact that the surveys use four different approaches to measuring beauty and in Section III delineate the types of measurement errors implicit in each approach and the directions of the biases that each generates on the measured impact of beauty on happiness. This discussion is applicable to a number of other examples where various measures of the crucial independent variable contain different sorts of measurement error. In the end, the validity of our results, which we present in Sections IV and V, depends on their robustness to differing approaches to measuring beauty and to eliciting peoples expressions of satisfaction/happiness. The raw effect of peoples looks on their satisfaction/happiness could operate through some of the many channels that have been shown in the beauty literature to offer routes by which beauty affects economic outcomes. We decompose these indirect effects into those that work through non-monetary mechanisms, including the ability to obtain more education, and monetary mechanisms, specifically impacts on own and spouses earnings. These may be at least as important as the direct effects of beauty on satisfaction/happinessthe halo that good looks might impart to a person independent of the effects of beauty on any market-related outcomes. In the main economic exercise in this study, presented in Section VI, we decompose the measured impact of beauty on satisfaction/happiness into its indirect component, both non-monetary and monetary parts, and its direct component and thus examine the extent to which any beauty-happiness relation works through markets. II. Data Sources and Descriptive Statistics

The six sets of data that we use are especially diverse in their methods of assessing beauty. The first two consist of the two cross sections of the Quality of American Life (QAL) surveys, undertaken in 1971 and 1978 as random samples of the U.S. population age 18 and over. At the end of the interview in each of these surveys the interviewer assessed the interviewees looks on a five -to-one scale, with 5 being strikingly handsome or beautiful and 1 being homely. The complete list of descriptions associated with each rating of beauty is shown in the first column of the first panel of Table 1, which also includes codes describing the type of error in measuring beauty in the survey that we discuss at length in Section III. There, and in our estimates, we merge the top two categories into one, good-looking, and do the same for the bottom two into a category, bad-looking, since only minute fractions of the samples are rated in the extreme categories (strikingly handsome or beautiful or homely). Economic and other outcomes for good- and bad-looking individuals have been compared to those for people with average looks (the excluded category) in a variety of studies (e.g., Hamermesh and Biddle, 1994; Leigh and Susilo, 2009). Both QAL surveys provide the same measures of happiness, each on a three-to-one scale, as the description in column (3) of Table 1 shows. The surveys also provide direct measures of life satisfaction, focused on the current moment (1971 survey) and on the persons total experience (1978 survey), measures that are standard in the literature. Henceforth we distinguish between the determinants of life satisfaction and those of happiness. The analysis of these surveys is thus data-driven, so that we are not inquiring into the various aspects of satisfaction/happiness that have been identified by psychologists (e.g., Seligman, 2004), but merely using general expressions of happiness, as has become standard in economics. The Quality of Life (QOL) survey was a longitudinal study conducted in Canada biennially from 1977 through 1981, beginning by randomly sampling Canadians ages 18 plus in 1977. In each of its three waves a wide array of subjective information was obtained. As in the QAL, at the end of each interview the interviewer rated the subjects looks using the same five-point rating system; and as there, and for the same reason, we combined the ratings to construct three categories. Interviewers differed across the

years, so that for those participants who remained in the study for all three years we have three independent measures of their beauty. The satisfaction measures use different wording and a different scale from those in the QAL, while the happiness measure is similar; both are obtained at the end of survey in each wave of the study. The German contribution to the General Social Survey program in 2008, the ALLBUS (Allgemeine Bevlkerungsumfrage der Sozialwissenschaften), included measures of beauty and happiness. As in the QAL and QOL the interviewer rated the subjects looks at the end of the interview (in this case, on an eleven-point scale); but the interviewer also provided a rating (on the same scale) at the very start of the interviewupon first contact with the subject. The survey also obtained a four-point rating of happiness, more backward-looking than the happiness measures in the QAL and QOL. We use data on all respondents ages 18 plus for whom information is available on the crucial variables. The Wisconsin Longitudinal Survey (WLS), a study of a cohort of Wisconsin high-school graduates from 1957, also contains measures of beauty and happiness. Unlike the previous three sets of studies, beauty in the WLS was based on assessments of high-school graduation photographs of the participants. In 2004 each respondents picture was rated by 12 individuals (6 men and 6 women) aged 63 to 91. In the available data, the beauty measure has already been normalized to be mean zero with standard deviation one. Each respondent was interviewed in 1992 and 2004 (at ages 53 and 65) and asked how many days last week s/he was happy, how many days s/he enjoyed life, and how many days s/he was sad. The happiness measures were thus obtained 35 and 47 years after the photographs from which the respondents beauty was rated were taken.1 The fifth data set is the British National Child Development Study (NCDS), a longitudinal examination of all Britons born March 3-9, 1958. At age 7, and again at age 11, each students teacher assessed his/her attractiveness during the school year, along a scale shown in column (1) of Table 1. We defined attractive as good-looking, the excluded category as average-looking and both unattractive
1

Other studies have assessed beauty from school pictures taken nearly two decades before the outcome linked to the assessments (Biddle and Hamermesh, 1998), and one study even showed a high correlation between the assessments of pictures of 10-year-olds and those of the same individuals at age 50 (Hatfield and Sprecher, 1986, p. 283).

and abnormal feature as bad-looking (since only a tiny fraction of respondents were classified as having an abnormal feature). This aggregation is similar to previous work relating these ratings to subsequent earnings (Harper, 2000). In various later waves of the survey, including 1991, 1999, 2004 and 2009 (at ages 33, 41, 46 and 51), the remaining respondents were asked questions designed to elicit their happiness/life satisfaction, some which have been studied before using these data (e.g., Blanchflower and Oswald, 2008). In the three most recent waves life satisfaction was elicited in a question (column (2) of Table 1) focusing on the respondents entire life experience. Happiness at age 51 was also measured in a backward -looking manner, while happiness at age 33 was measured with reference to the respondents current situation only. In Appendix Tables 1a-1e we present descriptive statistics for the six sets of surveys. For each of the interview studies (the QAL, QOL and ALLBUS), here and in subsequent sections, all the results are calculated using sample weights. Consider first the QAL. As is usual in assessing beauty, more people are rated in the top two categories than in the bottom two and a majority is rated as average-looking. Also as is usual, more women are rated as good-looking or bad-looking than men (Hamermesh, 2011, Chapter 2). Consistent with the previous satisfaction/happiness literature, most people are fairly happy and satisfied. The beauty measures in the QOL, shown in Appendix Table 1b, look remarkably similar qualitatively to those in the QAL, except for a lesser Canadian willingness to classify subjects as belowaverage looking. Also, the gender differences are reversed from those in the QAL, perhaps due to differences in measurement and context of the question, perhaps to true underlying differences in how beauty is perceived. For the ALLBUS, shown in Appendix Table 1c, the crucial thing to note is that the ratings of both mens and womens beauty are higher at the end of the interview than at the start, although men are on average rated lower at both times. Because the beauty measures in the WLS were normalized, we do not list them in Appendix Table 1d. In these data, people report being happy on most days (on average, between 5 and 6 days) in

the week before the survey. The number of days reported as being sad is typically 20 percent or fewer than the number of happy days. With one exceptionnumber of days reported happy in the 1992 wave of the surveymale respondents are happier than females. Appendix Table 1e shows that in the NCDS females looks (in this case at age 11) were rated more extremely than males. Perhaps, however, because of their close acquaintance with their charges, the teachers who rated the students attractiveness included more students in the attractive (good-looking) category than in the excluded category (children viewed as neither attractive nor unattractive). Most of the respondents were fairly happy or satisfied at ages 33-51. There is no consistent gender difference in average satisfaction/happiness across the sets of surveys, possibly due to differences in the nature of the questions eliciting subjective well-being (NolenHoeksema and Rusting, 1999). In the QAL the comparisons are mixed; in the QOL and the ALLBUS women are more satisfied/happier, although the differences are minuscule, while the opposite is true in the WLS and in most of the NCDS waves. The differences in the nature of the measures across the surveys make them non-comparable along this dimension, but considering them together underscores the benefits of using various different measures of satisfaction/happiness to prevent incorrect generalizations based on only one sample or one type of question. III. Measuring Beauty in Relation to Happiness To understand the nature of the measurement difficulties in these data sets, Figure 1 presents the timing of the assessment of the respondents beauty in relation to the el icitation of his/her satisfaction/happiness. A negative denotes that beauty is assessed after the respondent answers

question(s) about his/her satisfaction/happiness; and the widths of the bars are in proportion to the square root of the number of people rating the subjects beauty. Obviously there is no universal measure of human beautyit is in the eye of the beholder. But a huge literature (summarized in Hamermesh, 2011, Chapter 2) shows that there is substantial agreement by people about each others looks. The best possible measure would average ratings by large numbers of individuals who have no physical contact with a set of subjects who are dressed the same way and have the same standard facial expression. Since

that kind of measure has not ever been obtained, we are thrown back on thinking about how the measures in these data sets generate errors in inferring the impacts of beauty. Due to a lack of cross-validation data, we cannot estimate the sizes of the various measurement errors involved; but we can infer the directions of bias to the estimated impacts of beauty on satisfaction/happiness generated by the various sources of measurement error. To focus only on the beauty rating, consider the following simple linear regression model, with (satisfaction/happiness) as the dependent variable and true (latent) beauty variable:2 as the sole explanatory

(1)
The subscript t indicates the time at which the happiness measure is observed. We consider three possible types of difficulty in measuring beauty in relation to happiness: (1) Classical measurement error in the beauty rating: The beauty rating used in the actual regression is an imperfect measure of , because of the small number of raters.

(2) Attenuation in the accuracy of the beauty rating: Since beauty changes, albeit slowly, over time, the inherent noise in the beauty rating will be larger the more that the rating pre-dates the satisfaction/happiness measure. The variance of the reported B will be an increasing function of the time interval between observation of the beauty rating and observation of the happiness measure. (3) Bias in the beauty rating: If the beauty rating is elicited after the rater has spent time interacting with the subject, we would expect a positive correlation between the beauty rating and the unobservable component of the happiness outcome. For instance, an interviewer might have a

better opinion of a subjects beauty if the subject projects self - confidence in the interview, which might occur if the subject is happier.

To simplify notation we assume homoskedasticity throughout this section and therefore omit conditioning on

The following stylized model for the observed beauty rating incorporates each of these three possible sources of difficulty:

(2)
where is the time at which the beauty rating
-

is obtained. The attenuation component of the

measurement error is

, which has a variance assumed to be linear in the time interval

- : (3)

The other component of the error, denoted , is similar to a classical measurement error, except that we allow it to be correlated with the happiness residual :

(4)
For this general model, the inconsistency of the least-squares estimator is given by the probability limit of the slope estimate:

( where denotes the variance of

(5)

. (Note that the textbook case of classical-measurement error is a (no rating bias) and (no depreciation effect),

special case of this formula corresponding to for which ( ).)

For the QAL, QOL and the ALLBUS(end) data, the beauty rating is provided by the interviewer slightly after the satisfaction/happiness measures are elicited. (Below the listing for each data set in Table 1 we present the type of measurement error contained in the beauty rating.) There is no depreciation effect, since , but the interview format leads to the possibility of a bias in the beauty rating (

). In this case the probability limit of the slope estimate simplifies to ( )

(6)

If

is positive, the usual inconsistency associated with classical measurement error is opposite the

inconsistency associated with the beauty-rating bias. The overall direction of the inconsistency depends on whether (upward inconsistency) or (downward inconsistency). In regressions

based on these data sets the estimated contains measurement errors of Types 1 and 3.3 Estimates based on the ALLBUS(start), in which the interviewers rating of the respondents attractiveness is obtained at the very start of the interview, avoid Type 3 measurement error. In this case the classical errors-in-variables result that ( ) is all that remains (because only one Estimates of the impact of beauty on

person (the interviewer) assesses the subjects looks).

satisfaction/happiness that are based on this measure are therefore likely to be lower-bound estimates. In the WLS data the beauty rating is based upon a subjects high-school picture, and the happiness measure is elicited during late adulthood. There will be an attenuation effect, since , but

the lack of interaction between the rater and the subject eliminates concerns about beauty-rating bias. Entering into the general formula yields:
( )

(7)

Inconsistency is expected here due to mis-measurement and attenuation, although the Type 1 measurement error is minimized by the large numbers of raters of the photographs. The estimated beauty slope from the WLS regressions should therefore be considered too low, since it contains no Type 3 measurement error. Finally, for the NCDS dataset, all three difficulties could arise, since the beauty ratings were assessed in childhood ( ( ) by only two teachers, both of whom were very familiar with the subject

). As a result, the general probability-limit formula in (4) would apply. As with the QAL, QOL

and ALLBUS(end) data, the beauty-rating bias acts in the opposite direction from the other sources of
3

In all of these studies the interviewer assessed the subjects looks very near the end of the interview, and substantially after the subjects satisfaction/happiness was elicited. It is very unlikely that the subjects specific response to happiness questions directly affected the beauty rating.

measurement error. The impacts of the other errors here, however, would be expected to be much larger than in those data sets, since beauty is assessed in the NCDS decades before the expression of happiness is elicited (as captured by the attenuation bias ( - ) ). Although it is difficult to say how the sizes of

compare between the NCDS and those interview-based data sets, the large difference in the variance of measurement error between the NCDS and them suggests that the probability limits for the NCDS estimates would be lower than the true effects. IV. Basic Results Here we estimate linear models relating life satisfaction/happiness to beauty in each of the six data sets. In each case the variable is treated exactly as it is coded in the raw data (e.g., in the QAL the variable takes on seven integer values). We present linear regression estimates even though most of the satisfaction/happiness measures are defined as ordinal rankings, as this facilitates comparisons across the data sets. In each case (except the WLS, where we estimated Poisson models), we also estimated ordered probits describing these measures, with results on beauty and other covariates that are qualitatively (in terms of sign and statistical significance) identical. For each data set we initially estimate Specification 1, measuring the total effect of beauty on satisfaction/happiness, including as regressors only the beauty measure(s) and, in the QAL, QOL and ALLBUS, a quadratic in age and a measure of race in the U.S., or ethnicity (French-speaker in Canada, German-origin in Germany), which might affect happiness but which cannot be caused by differences in beauty. Specification 2 adds a number of covariates that have been shown to affect happiness and that may be affected by beauty. These include educational attainment, marital status and self-assessed health, and other variables, including location, as they are available in the various surveys.4 It also includes a

The subjective nature of self-assessed health may create an artificial positive relationship to satisfaction/happiness. We do not believe this biases our results on beauty, since the correlations of health and beauty are nearly zero in all of our samples.

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measure of the respondents own earnings (or income) and, where it is available, his/her spouses earnings or income.5 The upper part of Table 2a presents the estimates based on the two QAL surveys. Among both men and women all the coefficients have the expected signspositive on the indicator for good looks (above-average or beautifulthe upper third of looks), negative on the indicator for bad looks (belowaverage or homelythe bottom eighth of looks). significantly non-zero. The effects of differences in beauty on life satisfaction or happiness are not small in either set of data. In the 1971 QAL going from the bottom eighth of womens (mens) looks (those rated belowaverage) to the top third (those rated above-average) raises life satisfaction and happiness by 0.24 and 0.33 (0.17 and 0.25) standard deviations, respectively. In the 1978 data, similar calculations show effects of 0.30 and 0.39 for women (0.30 and 0.31 for men), respectively. These gross effects are substantial, implying movements up the distribution of happiness of at least five percentiles. The bottom half of Table 2a presents the results of adding all the covariates, both non-monetary and monetary, that might be affected by differences in beauty and that in turn might affect satisfaction/happiness. One of the 16 coefficients changes sign when we move to Specification 2, and three of those that were statistically significant in Specification 1 no longer are. In the 1971 data the estimated effects among men drop nearly to zero, while among women they drop by half; in the 1978 data they decrease by about 25 percent. Clearly, in these data at least some of the impact of beauty on happiness works indirectly. The QOL results, shown in in Table 2b, are qualitatively similar to those of the QAL. All but one of the estimated effects in each Specification is in the expected direction, and the negative impact on satisfaction/happiness of being among the small fraction of Canadians classified as being below-average Moreover, many of the parameter estimates are

There is substantial evidence that married people are happier (e.g., Blanchflower and Oswald, 2004; Oswald and Wu, 2011); but ones gains from marriage are affected by ones looks (Hamermesh and Biddle, 1994). Since beauty matters in the marriage market, we include marital status as one of the channels through which beauty can indirectly affect happiness.

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in looks is substantial. There is no obvious gender difference in the impacts of beauty. Moving from Specification 1 to Specification 2 reduces the estimated impact of beauty on happiness among both men and women, but not by very much. The estimated effects in Specification 2 are larger than those in the QAL, perhaps because fewer Canadians are classified as below-average: Going from the bottom twelfth of womens (mens) looks to the top third raises life satisfaction by 0.21 (0.32) standard deviations and happiness by 0.52 (0.73) standard deviations. Table 2c presents the estimates of the impacts of beauty, using the ALLBUS(start) and ALLBUS(end) measures, on happiness in Germany. Specification 2 expands Specification 1 by adding the basic measures of education, marital status, health and own income.6 Increases in the eleven-point beauty rating have significant positive effects on happiness in all cases, although adding the covariates typically reduces the impacts by about one-third. The effects are slightly smaller among men than among women, but the gender differences are not significant statistically. Most interestingly, and as predicted in the discussion of measurement error, the effects are somewhat smaller when we use the ALLBUS(start) ratings (with the differences being greater among men), suggesting but not very large. Using

the estimated effects in Specification 2, picking the same percentile points as in the distribution of looks in the QAL and moving from the equivalent of the median below-average looking woman (man) to the median above-average looking woman (man) produces an increase in happiness of 0.24 (0.17) standard deviations based on ALLBUS(start), and 0.29 (0.26) standard deviations based on ALLBUS(end). The former is smaller than in the QOL, perhaps because using ALLBUS(start) vitiates Type 3 measurement error.7

The education categories are other, mittlere Reife, and Hochschul, each accounting for about one -third of each sample. We include a separate indicator of life partner here but nowhere else, because nearly 10 percent of the sample reported being unmarried but having a life partner.
7

The eleven-point scale in these beauty ratings allows us to compare how well different pairs of indicators of good looks and bad looks describe happiness. While no pair performs as well as the eleven-point measure, defining good looks as the top third of respondents on the eleven-point scale, and bad looks as the bottom sixth, roughly the divisions shown in the other interview data, describes happiness in these samples better (in terms of adjusted Rsquared) than any other pair of indicators.

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The results from the WLS, with number of days happy, enjoyed and/or sad, are presented in Table 2d. The upper part of the table contains results from equations including only the unit-normal measure of beauty, while Specification 2 in the bottom part adds the usual measures of years of education, marital status, and own and household income, but also the number of children, BMI observed at highschool graduation, and current BMI. As with the results for the QOL and the ALLBUS data sets, adding this vector of covariates reduces the estimated impacts of attractiveness on the measures of satisfaction/happiness, but not greatly. There is no significant impact of attractiveness on happiness among men at either of the two ages at which these adults are observed. Among women, however, in all the equations the more attractive respondents are significantly happier at age 53 than less attractive respondents. The impacts are smaller relative to the standard deviations of satisfaction/happiness than in the interview data sets, as suggested by the discussion of measurement error arising from attenuation. We can explain the disappearance of the results for women as they age by the possibility that the correlation of attractiveness at age 18 with attractiveness at age 53 may be greater than that with attractiveness at age 65. The absence of any relation between attractiveness and happiness among men is harder to explain, especially in light of the fact that the labor-market effects of beauty are at least as large among men as among women. One possibility is that there is inherently more measurement error in the ratings (assigned over 40 years after the pictures were taken) of mens high -school graduation pictures than of womens. Table 2e shows the results of relating measures of happiness and satisfaction in adulthood to attractiveness assessed by a childs teacher at age 11 in the United Kingdom using the NCDS sample. Specification 1 includes indicators for being rated as attractive or as unattractive (with the middle category excluded). Although two of the parameter estimates have unexpected signs, all of the

statistically significant estimates have the expected signs, and there is no obvious difference in the sizes of the effects between men and women. Specification 2 contains the common expansion of variables plus

13

measures of the number of children, BMI at age 11 and current BMI.8

The estimated effects of

attractiveness are typically somewhat attenuated when the control variables are added, although the overall conclusions remain the same: Where significantly nonzero, the beauty measures have the

expected effects; and, as in the upper part of the table, the impacts of beauty are roughly the same by gender.9 Unlike in the WLS, there is no clear variation with age in the impacts of looks on either happiness or life satisfaction. In Tables 2a-2e the adjusted R2 describing the equations fits are not high by general standards. By comparison to those found in the happiness literature (e.g., Blanchflower and Oswald, 2008), however, they are fairly high. Most important, nearly all of the estimated effects of beauty are of the expected sign, and many are statistically significantly non-zero. We have produced many estimates of the impact of looks30 coefficients for each gender for each of Specifications 1 and 2: 8 from the QAL surveys, 4 from the QOL, 2 from the ALLBUS, 6 from the WLS and 10 from the NCDS. Among men, in Specification 1(2) 28(24) of the 30 estimated coefficients have the expected signs, of which 12(7) are significantly nonzero. Among women, in Specification 1(2) the comparable summaries are 27(25) and 15(11). Only one of the few incorrectly signed parameter estimates is statistically different from zero. The data strongly support the notion that better looks produce a gross positive effect on life satisfaction/happiness, even after we adjust for a large number of monetary and non-monetary factors that might affect happiness and that might themselves be correlated with or caused by differences in beauty. These comparisons clearly suggest a positive answer to the titular question of this study. The results for Specification 2 even suggest that some of the total effect of beauty on happiness is direct and does not work through monetary and non-monetary economic channels. The difficulty is how to compare

The categories represented by the vector of education indicators are: cse or equivalent, O-level or equivalent, Alevel or equivalent, higher qualification, or university degree or higher, with no qualification as the excluded category.
9

Current BMI and BMI at age 11 have mixed effects on happiness/satisfaction, but their inclusion hardly alters the impacts of beauty on happiness. This absence of any effect is not surprising, in light of the demonstrated insignificant correlations between beauty and BMI over all but the very extreme upper tail of BMI (e.g., Thornhill and Grammer, 1999).

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the estimates across what are six independent samples for each gender (two QAL samples and the other four data sets). To do so we calculate the effect of being at different percentiles of the distribution of beauty on the level of satisfaction/happiness measured in standard deviations. Thus, for example, we assume that the average male among the 12.5 percent rated as below-average in the QAL 1971 is at the 6th percentile of the distribution of looks. That percentile in the unit normal distribution is 1.53 standard deviations below the mean, and we impute that as the average beauty among those men rated as badlooking, implicitly assuming that the distribution of beauty in the lower tail is symmetric around its value for the median person in that tail.10 We use this type of approximation for the QAL, QOL and NCDS. For the ALLBUS we find the percentile points of the distributions of the eleven-point scale corresponding to percentiles in the averages of the QAL, QOL and NCDS, and for the WLS we do the same thing at the percentiles of the unit normal deviates. We use these approximations to convert the parameter estimates to what are essentially beta-coefficients, thus placing all the estimates in standard-deviation units. The results of these calculations for Specification 2 are shown in Figures 2a and 2b, with each of the points in a Figure representing the fractional change in standard deviations of satisfaction/happiness generated by a movement from the mean beauty to the beauty (in standard deviation units) of the average person rated as bad-looking (to the left of the vertical line at zero) or good-looking (to its right). Among women (men) the average good-looking respondent is 0.79 (0.89) standard deviations above the mean of beauty, while the average bad-looking respondent is 1.62 (1.67) standard deviations below the mean. On average, among women (men) the gain from being this good-looking is 0.061 (0.046) standard deviations along the satisfaction/happiness index compared to the average male (female), while the loss from being this bad-looking is 0.134 (0.125) standard deviations of satisfaction/happiness.11 Assuming, as these calculations must, that the effects are linear within the categories aboveaverage and below-average, or attractive and unattractive, the results in the expanded specifications imply
10

One could argue that the distribution becomes thinner further out in each tail, although we have no evidence on that. If so, the difference in average beauty between the upper and lower tails would be less, and our calculations would be understating the impacts of differences in beauty.
11

These are averages weighted by the numbers of observations in each of the six samples.

15

that a one standard-deviation increase in beauty raises satisfaction/happiness by 0.069 (0.081) among women (men). These are far smaller than the impact of income on happiness in a cross-section

(computed from Frey and Stutzer, 2002, Table 1), although that calculation is based on decile averages rather than individual observations. In comparison to standard-deviation impacts of the crucial

experimental variables that are reported in related literatures, however, including those on education and health, they are not small. The relative sizes of the estimates shown in Figures 2a and 2b generally accord with the discussion of measurement error. They are largest in the QAL, QOL and ALLBUS(end), where the assessment of beauty late in a long interview might have created upward biases due to Type 3 measurement error. They are somewhat smaller in the ALLBUS(start); and they are smallest, and certainly negatively biased, in the WLS, where changes in beauty will have led to Type 2 measurement error that has grown over time. The direction of the bias in the NCDS is unclear, since the errors induce opposite-signed biases, but the estimates are generally below those from the interview studies. V. Using Alternative Measures of Beauty Concerns about measurement issues in beauty underlie the comparisons across the data sets used in Section IV. We address those concerns further by using alternative estimates that might remove some remaining difficulties with these measures.12 It is difficult to impossible to construct instruments for beauty that would allow one to claim convincingly to have eliminated concerns about causality. The QOL does, however, provide such an opportunity, as lagged beauty measurements (two years prior) can be used as instruments for beauty measurements in the year that satisfaction and happiness are assessed. We therefore re-estimate the models in Table 2b for the 1979 and 1981 waves using the 1977 and 1979
12

In addition to these experiments and adjustments with alternative measures of beauty, we also experimented with adding controls that were uniquely available in the various data sets. Thus, in the QOL and the NCDS, we added a measure of whether the respondent had gotten divorced or had gotten married since the previous interview. In the NCDS we added a vector of indicators of region of residence at age 11, and in the WLS an indicator of whether the respondent resided in Wisconsin at age 53 (65). None of these additions altered the estimates of the impact of beauty on satisfaction/happiness. In the NCDS we added variables indicating the respondents parents social class during the respondents childhood, and whether a parent had died since the previous interview. While these variables had significant effects on satisfaction/happiness, they were not correlated with the beauty measure and thus did not qualitatively alter the estimated impacts of beauty.

16

measures of beauty, respectively, as instruments. Table 3 presents the results of re-estimating Specifications 1 and 2 using this approach. The changes in the parameter estimates are small: In some cases the effects are larger with the IV approach, in others smaller. Implicitly, these results suggest that concerns about reverse causality in the context of beauty and happinesswhat we have identified as Type 3 measurement errormay be misplaced, at least in this data set. In the WLS we re-estimated both specifications using first the normalized beauty ratings given by female raters to pictures of female respondents, and by male raters to male subjects, then switched and reestimated the equations using opposite-sex ratings. Most of the estimates are attenuated slightly, just as expected assuming that there is more Type 1 measurement error when fewer raters are used; but all of those that were statistically significant (women in 1992) remain so. The NCDS respondents appearance was also assessed by their teachers at age 7. To the extent that measurement error in the variable we used arose from random errors in individual teachers assessments of the childs appearance, averaging the teachers ratings at ages 7 and 11 will reduce Type 1 error. These average measures replace the age-11 measures in the estimating equations, and the age-11 BMI is replaced with the average of BMI at ages 7 and 11.13 In a few cases some previously insignificant parameter estimates in Table 2e become marginally significant, but otherwise there is no change. Implicitly, whatever measurement error exists in the age-11 proxies is highly positively correlated with that in the age-7 data and is not much reduced by averaging.14 Another concern is that different assessors rate beauty differently and that their idiosyncrasies may be correlated with the subjects happiness. With most teachers in the NCDS assessing only one subjects appearance, this issue cannot be examined in those data; and we cannot identify the raters in the
13

As Lubotsky and Wittenberg (2006) show, the appropriate method in this case and in the re-estimation for the QOL is to introduce the information from the other two years separately rather than as averages. We discuss only the estimates based on averages to save space, as the sums of the coefficients, and the pairs statistical significance, are always almost identical to those of the averages for both data sets.
14

We also used the age-7 measures alonelooks and BMIin place of the age-11 measures. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the results were slightly weaker than with the age-11 measures, and thus somewhat weaker still than the specifications based on the age-7 and age-11 averages.

17

WLS.

In the interview surveys, however, we know which raters assessed each subjects beauty.

Accordingly, we re-estimate the equations in Tables 2a-2c adding interviewer fixed effects. With one exception (the impact of bad looks on womens life satisfaction in the QAL 1978 data) none of the significant impacts shown in Tables 2a-2c became statistically insignificant, nor did any of the estimated effects of looks on satisfaction/happiness reverse sign. The general conclusion from this and the other reestimates is that the results are robust to all the possible alternative measures of beauty that the data sets allow. As noted in Section III, the ALLBUS(start) assessment of beauty is uniquely free of all but Type 1 measurement error, so that regressions based on it provide a lower-bound estimate of the impact of beauty on satisfactionbut only for this one data set. If, however, we assume that the upward biases in the estimates based on the QAL and the QOL due to the Type 3 measurement error in the beauty ratings of beauty are proportionate to those that distinguish the ALLBUS(end) from the ALLBUS(start) estimates, we can expand the set of lower-bound estimates by prorating the QAL and QOL estimates by the ratios of the estimates based on the ALLBUS(start) to those based on the ALLBUS(end). In Specification 2 in the ALLBUS these ratios are 0.919 (0.760) among women (men), implying that Type 3 measurement errors are not greatly inflating the estimated impacts of beauty on happiness. The prorated estimates of Specification 2 in Tables 2a and 2b still suggest substantial impacts of beauty on satisfaction/happiness, suggesting that the lower-bound effect of beauty on these outcomes is not small. VI. Inferring and Decomposing the Direct and Indirect Effects of Beauty The main economic question in this study is whether the effect of beauty on satisfaction/happiness works through markets: How much of the effect is directwith people who are otherwise identical in every respect being happier/more satisfied than their less good-looking peers? How much is indirectdue to beauty enhancing ones outcomes in various markets, including the labor and marriage markets?15 Of the indirect effect, how much results from monetary variablesdifferences in

15

The effect of a different personal endowment, height, on happiness was decomposed into these components by Deaton and Arora (2009), with the adjustment limited to accounting for the impact of height on earnings.

18

own and spouses incomes, how much from non-monetary variables? Obviously the answers depend on the sets of variables available to represent the different components of these indirect effects, just as in any decomposition of a gross effect (e.g., the attribution of wage differences to those generated by differences in employer and employee characteristicsAbowd et al, 1999). The estimate of in equation (1) is the gross effect of beauty on satisfaction/happiness. Adding the covariates Xt that are included in Specification 2, both those representing monetary measures, the vector

, and those representing non-monetary measures, the vector

, we obtain:

(8)
The direct effect of beauty on satisfaction/happiness is If we exclude the vector , and the indirect effect is the difference .

and re-estimate (8), we obtain a third estimate of the impact of beauty on

satisfaction/happiness, . The indirect effect can then in turn be decomposed into its non-monetary and monetary components as: [ Alternatively, if we exclude the vector . (9a)

and again re-estimate (8), we obtain a fourth estimate of the and will yield a

impact of beauty on satisfaction/happiness, . This will differ from the estimate

different decomposition of the indirect effect into its non-monetary and monetary components: + [ . (9b)

As we noted in Section IV, a lower-bound estimate of the effect of beauty on happiness is based on using the German ALLBUS(start) measure. Accordingly, we concentrate initially on the results from this data set using this measure of beauty. We first re-estimate (7) sequentially without the vectors and respectively to obtain the estimates of and . We calculate the direct effect of beauty, based ; and the alternative

on the estimated

; the indirect effect, based on the estimated

decompositions of the indirect effect into nonmonetary and monetary components, based on (9a) and (9b). We combine these with the standard deviations of the many-valued measure of beauty and the ordinal

19

happiness measure to infer the impacts of a one standard-deviation increase in beauty on the change in happiness measured in standard-deviation units. Table 4 presents these decompositions of the impact of beauty on happiness using the ALLBUS(start) measure of beauty. The indirect effects of beautythrough demographic and monetary variablesare slightly below half of the gross effects for men and are relatively smaller for women. Depending on the decomposition used, perhaps nearly half of the indirect effect is accounted for by monetary variables among men. Among women in both decompositions essentially none of the indirect effect is due to its effects on womens earnings. The calculations based on these data, probably the best available, indicate both substantial direct and indirect effects of beauty, and that some, but not very much of the latter among men results from beauty affecting happiness through its impacts on monetary outcomes.16 That the direct effects are relatively more important among women is consistent with the general result in the literature that earnings effects of beauty are smaller among women than among men. While Table 4 lists the best estimates of the decompositions in light of the discussion of the various types of measurement error, it ignores the evidence from all the other samples on which Specifications 1 and 2 were estimated. To combine all of the results in constructing these

decompositions, we re-estimated Specification 2 over each of the data sets, in each case dropping first the monetary and then the non-monetary measures. We then take these re-specifications and Specification 1, combine results in the same way that we used the estimates of Specification 2 to construct Figures 2 and obtain decompositions in terms of standard deviations of the impacts of good- or bad looks on happiness. Rather than presenting the estimates of these expanded specifications or more charts like Figure 2, we summarize the results of the decompositions in Table 5 by averaging the impacts over all the sets of estimates. Using all the results in this manner yields inferences that are somewhat like those in Table 4 based on the ALLBUS(start) measures of beauty, but there are some differences. The direct effect of
16

One might be concerned that, even though, as noted earlier, estimates of (7) based on ordered probits gave identical inferences to the least-squares estimates, perhaps the decomposition proposed here would generate different inferences depending on the method of estimation. The inferences are identical if we use ordered probits: The parameter estimates on beauty in Specifications 1, 2 and Specifications 2 without X Mt (XNt) also suggest similar conclusions to those implied in Tables 4 and 5.

20

beauty on happiness in this average accounts for a much larger fraction of the gross effect among women than men; and the monetary component of the indirect effect among men is also larger than that among women. Our proxies for both monetary and non-monetary outcomes in the labor and marriage markets that are affected by beauty are far from perfect. It thus seems fair to conclude that the estimates in Tables 4 and 5 suggest that the direct effect of beauty is about one-half of the total effect, but it may be less. Moreover, measurement errors in the monetary variables are almost certainly greater than in such nonmonetary indicators as educational attainment, marital status and numbers of children. Thus to an unknowable extent we have probably underestimated the sizes of the indirect impacts of beauty on satisfaction/happiness and have underestimated the shares of those impacts that are attributable to monetary outcomes.17 VII. Conclusions and Extensions We have examined the relationship between peoples life satisfaction/happiness and their beauty. While the beauty measures introduce difficulties into inferring the true effect of beauty on happiness, those difficulties, which differ across our data sets, do not result because we make the simple mistake of essentially relating happiness to a proxy for happiness. The difficulties with the beauty measures are

more subtle in our context, but the use of a large number of different types of assessments of beauty and the one data set that allows IV estimation enable us to circumvent them. The results suggest that a persons beauty does increase his/her satisfaction/happiness, with effects that are not small. Among both men and women at much as half of the increase in satisfaction/happiness generated by beauty is indirect, resulting because better-looking people achieve more desirable educational, health and labor-market outcomes (higher earnings) and do better in the
17

One might object that the surveys key the respondents into thinking about economic issues when they respond to questions about their life satisfaction/happiness, so that the relative importance of the indirect effects is overstated. We do not believe that this is a problem in these data sets. In the ALLBUS and the NCDS questions about pay and income long precede those on satisfaction/happiness, in the QOL the opposite is the case, while in the QAL own pay is elicited long before satisfaction/happiness, while family income is elicited long after. In sum, survey-induced biases seem to be minimal.

21

marriage market (including obtaining higher-income spouses). While the majority of the indirect impact arises from non-monetary outcomes that are correlated with beauty, we show that monetary measures do have some indirect impacts on satisfaction/happiness, especially for men. Given the importance of happiness in affecting other outcomes, our results set the stage for work relating beauty to a variety of objective behaviors, especially since some effort has begun by economists to relate happiness to these outcomes (e.g., Daly and Wilson, 2009). These include workplace

productivity, clinical depression, suicide and no doubt others too. While none of the many data sets used here allow these additional steps, they offer a chance to expand the literatures on beauty and happiness to additional, objective outcomes. In order to draw the specific inferences about these impacts of beauty we have had to circumvent problems that arise in the collection of data measuring what is obviously a subjective characteristic. This has led us to identify three types of measurement error and to infer the directions of the biases that they induce in our estimates (not their magnitudes, since none of the data sets allowed that). While the exercise was specific to our particular problem, the notion of these various types of measurement error applies mutatis mutandis to any problem where measures of a subjective characteristic are obtained and used in describing some objective or subjective outcome. For examples, studies of the impacts of noncognitive characteristics on childrens development, educational outcomes and adult wages would be informed by this discussion, as would studies examining interviewers assessments of workers jobreadiness and fit for different types of work. The central point is that considering the nature of measurement error, as we have done here, is important in a variety of contexts in the social sciences.

22

REFERENCES Abowd, John, Francis Kramarz and David Margolis, High Wage Workers and High Wage Firms, Econometrica, 67 (March 1999): 251-333. Benjamin, Daniel, and Jesse Shapiro, Thin-Slice Forecasts of Gubernatorial Elections, Review of Economics and Statistics, 91 (Aug. 2009): 523-36. Biddle, Jeff, and Daniel Hamermesh, Beauty, Productivity and Discrimination: Lawyers Looks and Lucre, Journal of Labor Economics, 16 (Jan. 1998): 172-201. Blanchflower, David, and Andrew Oswald, Well-Being over Time in Britain and the USA, Journal of Public Economics, 88 (July 2004): 1359-86. --------------------------, and ----------------------, Hypertension and Happiness Across Nations, Journal of Health Economics, 27 (March 2008): 218-33. Clark, Andrew, Ed Diener, Yannis Georgellis and Richard Lucas, Lags and Leads in Life Satisfaction: A Test of the Baseline Hypothesis, Economic Journal, 118 (June 2008): F222-43. Conti, Gabriella, and Stephen Pudney, Survey Design and the Analysis of Satisfaction, Review of Economics and Statistics, 93 (2011): 1087-93. Daly, Mary, and Daniel Wilson, Happiness, Unhappiness and Suicide: An Empirical Assessment, Journal of the European Economic Association, 7 (April-May 2009): 539-49. Deaton, Angus, and Raksha Arora, Life at the Top: The Benefits of Height, Economics and Human Biology, 7 (July 2009): 133-6. Diener, Ed, Frank Fujita and Brian Wolsic, Physical Attractiveness and Subjective Well -Being, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 69 (July 1995): 120-129. Easterlin, Richard. Happiness, Growth, and the Life Cycle. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010. Frey, Bruno, and Alois Stutzer, What Can Economists Learn from Happiness Research? Journal of Economic Literature, 40 (June 2002): 402-435. Gautier, Pieter, Michael Svarer and Coen Teulings, Marriage and the City: Search Frictions and Sorting of Singles, Journal of Urban Economics, 67 (March 2010): 206-18. Hamermesh, Daniel,. Beauty Pays. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2011. ---------------------- and Jeff Biddle, Beauty and the Labor Market, American Economic Review, 84 (Dec. 1994): 1174-94. Harper, Barry, Beauty, Stature and the Labour Market: A British Cohort Study, Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, 62 (Dec. 2000): 771-800. Hatfield, Elaine, and Susan Sprecher, Mirror, Mirror: The Importance of Looks in Everyday Life. New York: SUNY Press, 1986.

23

Hitsch, Gnter, Ali Hortasu and Dan Ariely, Matching and Sorting in Online Dating, American Economic Review, 100 (March 2010): 130-163. Kahneman, Daniel, and Angus Deaton, High Income Improves Evaluation of Life but not Emotional Well-Being, Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, 107 (Sept. 21, 2010): 16489-93. Leigh, Andrew, and Tirta Susilo, Is Voting Skin-deep? Estimating the Effect of Candidate Ballot Photographs on Election Outcomes, Journal of Economic Psychology, 30 (Feb. 2009): 61-70. Lubotsky, Darren, and Martin Wittenberg, Interpretation of Regressions with Multiple Proxies, Review of Economics and Statistics, 88 (Aug. 2006): 549-62. Mathes, Eugene, and Arnold Kahn, Physical Attractiveness, Happiness, Neuroticism and Self -Esteem, Journal of Psychology: Interdisciplinary and Applied, 90 (May 1975): 27-30. Mocan, H. Naci, and Erdal Tekin, Ugly Criminals, Review of Economics and Statistics, 92 (Feb. 2010): 15-30. Mbius, Markus, and Tanya Rosenblat, Why Beauty Matters, American Economic Review, 96 (March 2006): 222-35. Nolen-Hoeksema, Susan, and Cheryl Rusting, Gender Differences in Well-Being, in Daniel Kahneman, Ed Diener and Norbert Schwarz, eds., Well-Being: The Foundations of Economic Psychology. New York: Russell Sage, 1999. Oswald, Andrew, and Stephen Wu, Well-Being Across America: Evidence from a Random Sample of One Million Americans, Review of Economics and Statistics, 93 (2011): 1118-34. Scitovsky, Tibor, The Joyless Economy. New York: Oxford University Press, 1976. Seligman, Martin, Authentic Happiness. New York: Free Press, 2004 Stevenson, Betsey, and Justin Wolfers, Economic Growth and Subjective Well -Being: Reassessing the Easterlin Paradox, Brookings Papers on Economic Activity (Spring 2008): 1-87. Thornhill, Randy, and Karl Grammer, The Body and Face of Woman: One Ornament that Signals Quality? Evolution and Human Behavior, 20 (March 1999): 105-20. Umberson, Debra, and Michael Hughes, The Impact of Physical Attractiveness on Achievement and Psychological Well-Being, Social Psychology Quarterly, 50 (Sept. 1987): 227-36.

24

Table 1. Descriptions of Beauty, Happiness and Satisfaction Measures, Five Data Sets Beauty Satisfaction 1971: How satisfied are you with your life as a whole these days? (7 to 1 scale) Happiness Taking all things together, how would you say things are these days --- would you say youre very happy, pretty happy or not too happy these days? (3 to 1 scale)

(Measurement error type(s))

QAL 1971, 1978 US 5-point rating by interviewer at end of interview: Strikingly handsome or beautiful Good-looking (above average for age and sex) Average looks for age and sex Quite plain (below average for age and sex) Homely (1,3)

1978: How satisfied are you with your life as a whole (100 point scale)?

QOL 1977, 1979, 1981 CDN

Same as QAL 1971 and 1978 (1,3)

All things considered, how satisfied would you say you are?

Generally speaking, how happy are you with your life as a whole?

(11 to 1 scale)

(Very, fairly, not too).

ALLBUS 2008 DE

11-point scale, attractive to unattractive (1); (1,3)

If you look at your entire life, would you say you are: very happy, rather happy, not very happy, not happy at all?

Table 1, cont.
WLS Wisc. Constructed from ratings on an 11-point scale, with endpoints labeled as "not at all attractive" (1) and "extremely attractive" (11), based upon an individual's high-school yearbook photo (in 1957); each photo was rated by six men and six women, and the constructed measure is an average of the z-scores across raters (1,2) Age 53: On how many days during the past week did you feel happy? (sad?) (values 0 through 7) Age 65: Same

NCDS UK

Teachers' ratings of the student's appearance at age 7 and at age 11. Which best describes the student? Attractive; unattractive; looks underfed; abnormal feature; scruffy and dirty. "Looks underfed and "scruffy and dirty" were coded as missing, attractive as good-looking, unattractive and abnormal feature as bad-looking, others as neither. (1,2,3).

Age 33: All things considered, how happy are you? (4 to 1 scale) Age 41, 46, 51: How satisfied are you with the way your life has turned out so far? (10 to 0 scale, from completely satisfied to completely unsatisfied) Age 51: On balance I look back on life with a sense of happiness. Often; sometimes; not.

Note: The codes for the types of measurement error, as described in Section III, are: Type 1 (classical measurement error in the beauty rating), Type 2 (attenuation in the accuracy of the beauty rating), and Type 3 (bias in the beauty rating).

Table 2a. Results from Regressions of Life Satisfaction and Happiness on Beauty Ratings, QAL 1971 and 1978* Men Women Good looks Bad looks Good looks Bad looks Specification 1: LS, beauty, age quadratic, race, 1971 Life Satisfaction Adj. R2 Happiness Adj. R2 N= 0.007
(0.099)

-0.199
(0.130)

0.114
(0.087)

-0.191
(0.103)

0.013 0.058
(0.048)

0.023 -0.096
(0.063)

0.103
(0.041)

-0.099
(0.048)

0.014 831

0.036 1138

Specification 1: LS, beauty, age quadratic, race, 1978 Life Satisfaction Adj. R2 Happiness Adj. R N=
2

2.450
(0.771)

-2.467
(1.218)

1.627
(0.746)

-2.734
(1.083)

0.022 0.127
(0.032)

0.008 -0.087
(0.050)

0.127
(0.030)

-0.058
(0.044)

0.020 1371

0.024 1852

Specification 2: Add, education indicators, number of children, married, health, income, 1971 Life Satisfaction Adj. R2 Happiness Adj. R2 -0.101
(0.098)

-0.056
(0.129)

0.083
(0.086)

-0.062
(0.102)

0.090 0.010
(0.048)

0.087 -0.029
(0.064)

0.075
(0.040)

-0.030
(0.048)

0.064

0.100

Specification 2: Add education indicators, number of children, married, health, income, 1978 Life Satisfaction Adj. R2 Happiness Adj. R2 2.153
(0.773)

-2.332
(1.215)

1.235
(0.747)

-2.041
(1.077)

0.049 0.103
(0.032)

0.047 -0.062
(0.050)

0.101
(0.030)

-0.028
(0.043)

0.044

0.069

*Estimates that are significantly non-zero, one-sided 5-percent level, in bold. The observations used in Specification 2 are identical to those used in Specification 1.

Table 2b. Results from Regressions of Life Satisfaction and Happiness on Beauty Ratings, QOL, 1977-81* Men Women (N = 492) (N = 622) Good looks Bad looks Good looks Bad looks

Specification 1: LS, beauty, age quadratic, language, year indicators. Life Satisfaction Adj. R2 Happiness Adj. R2 -0.089
(0.145)

-0.409
(0.272)

0.196
(0.159)

-0.338
(0.303)

0.027 0.030
(0.054)

0.029 -0.165
(0.082)

0.073
(0.049)

-0.283
(0.093)

0.033

0.030

Specification 2: Add, education indicators, number of children, married, health, province, family income, personal income. Life Satisfaction Adj. R2 Happiness Adj. R2 -0.179
(0.143)

-0.376
(0.255)

0.127
(0.142)

-0.158
(0.291)

0.080 0.008
(0.052)

0.090 -0.155
(0.084)

0.040
(0.045)

-0.196
(0.081)

0.063

0.120

*Estimates that are significantly non-zero, one-sided 5-percent level, in bold. Standard errors are clustered on individuals.

Table 2c. Regressions of Happiness on Beauty Ratings, ALLBUS Germany, 2008* Men (N = 1554) Start End Women (N = 1623) Start End

Beauty rated at:

Specification 1: LS, beauty, age quadratic, German Beauty rating Adj. R2 0.047
(0.008)

0.056
(0.008)

0.062
(0.008)

0.066
(0.008)

0.022

0.030

0.040

0.044

Specification 2: Add education indicators, married, partnered, health, own income Beauty rating Adj. R2 0.025
(0.008)

0.033
(0.008)

0.040
(0.008)

0.044
(0.008)

0.117

0.120

0.123

0.125

*Estimates that are significantly non-zero, one-sided 5-percent level, in bold.

Table 2d. Regressions of Days Happy, Enjoyed or Sad on Beauty Rating, WLS Ages 53 and 65 Men Women 1992 2004 1992 2004 N= 801 788 993 952 Specification 1: LS, beauty only # days happy Adj. R2 # days enjoyed Adj. R2 # days sad Adj. R2 -0.012
(0.056)

0.016
(0.044)

0.128
(0.048)

-0.026
(0.044)

-0.001 0.069
(0.056)

-0.001 0.008
(0.045)

0.006 0.142
(0.050)

-0.001 0.006
(0.049)

0.001 -0.030
(0.033)

-0.001 -0.014
(0.028)

0.007 -0.100
(0.042)

-0.001 -0.040
(0.039) 0.000

-0.000

-0.001

0.005

Specification 2: Add completed education, married, number of children, HS BMI, current BMI, health, own income, household income # days happy Adj. R2 # days enjoyed Adj. R2 # days sad Adj. R2 -0.035
(0.056)

0.008
(0.045)

0.108
(0.049)

-0.037
(0.044)

0.037 0.043
(0.056)

0.064 -0.004
(0.046)

0.056 0.108
(0.050)

0.085 -0.011
(0.046)

0.030 -0.029
(0.031)

0.054 -0.008
(0.030)

0.077 -0.092
(0.043)

0.070 -0.046
(0.041)

0.054

0.047

0.037

0.080

*Estimates that are significantly non-zero, one-sided 5-percent level, in bold.

Table 2e. Results from Regressions of Life Satisfaction and Happiness on Beauty Ratings, NCDS Ages 33, 41, 46 and 51 Men Attractive Unattractive Age 11 Age 11 Specification 1: LS, beauty only Age 33 N= Happiness Adj. R2 0.037
(0.020)

Women Attractive Unattractive Age 11 Age 11

3455 -0.031
(0.035)

3712 0.035
(0.022)

-0.027
(0.037)

0.001 Age 41

0.001

N= Life Satisfaction Adj. R2 0.258

(0.064)

3271 -0.060
(0.114)

3656 0.116
(0.075)

-0.110
(0.126)

0.005 Age 46

0.001

N= Life Satisfaction Adj. R2 0.112

(0.055)

2886 -0.220
(0.104)

3231 -0.021
(0.061)

-0.219
(0.104)

0.003 Age 51

0.001

N= Life Satisfaction Adj. R2 Happiness Adj. R2 0.109

(0.069)

2622 -0.139
(0.126)

2928 0.218
(0.078)

-0.327
(0.134)

0.001 0.106
(0.046)

0.007 -0.045
(0.084)

0.047
(0.049)

0.021
(0.084)

0.002

-0.000

Table 2e, cont. Men Attractive Unattractive Age 11 Age 11 Women Attractive Unattractive Age 11 Age 11

Specification 2: Add education indicators, number of children, BMI 11, BMI current, married/partnered, health, own earnings, family income (or partners earnings) Age 33 Happiness Adj. R2 0.017
(0.019)

-0.019
(0.034)

0.017
(0.022)

-0.001
(0.036)

0.071 Age 41

0.075

Life Satisfaction Adj. R2

0.151
(0.061)

0.046
(0.108)

0.003
(0.072)

-0.030
(0.121)

0.113 Age 46

0.101

Life Satisfaction Adj. R2

0.013
(0.051)

-0.094
(0.089)

-0.109
(0.056)

-0.147
(0.094)

0.172 Age 51

0.181

Life Satisfaction Adj. R2 Happiness Adj. R2

-0.023
(0.064)

-0.057
(0.116)

0.065
(0.072)

-0.291
(0.123)

0.168 0.045
(0.043)

0.174 -0.033
(0.078)

-0.028
(0.045)

0.001
(0.077)

0.154

0.169

*Estimates that are significantly non-zero, one-sided 5-percent level, in bold. The observations used in Specification 2 are identical to those used in Specification 1.

Table 3. IV Estimates of the Impact of Beauty on Life Satisfaction and Happiness, QOL, 1979-81* Men (N = 492) Good looks Bad looks Women (N = 622) Good looks Bad looks

Specification 1: LS, beauty, age quadratic, language, year indicators. Life Satisfaction Adj. R2 Happiness Adj. R2 0.169
(0.136)

-0.500
(0.332)

0.238
(0.153)

-0.400
(0.300)

0.030 0.061
(0.048)

0.031 -0.096
(0.114)

0.073
(0.048)

-0.158
(0.082)

0.029

0.019

Specification 2: Add, education indicators, number of children, married, health, province, family income, personal income. Life Satisfaction Adj. R2 Happiness Adj. R2
individuals.

0.166
(0.134)

-0.404
(0.324)

0.198
(0.141)

-0.319
(0.286)

0.080 0.048
(0.049)

0.093 -0.253
(0.113)

0.051
(0.043)

-0.137
(0.080)

0.059

0.117

*Estimates that are significantly non-zero, one-sided 5-percent levels, in bold. Standard errors are clustered on

Table 4. Decomposition of Lower-Bound Estimates SDHappiness/SDLooks Units, ALLBUS Germany, 2008*

of

Beauty

on

Happiness,

in

Men
Specification No.: 1. (Gross effect) 2. (Direct effect) Indirect effect: Based on (9a): Monetary Non-monetary Based on (9b): Monetary Non-monetary 0.149 0.081 0.068

Women

0.196 0.127 0.069

0.011 0.057

0.003 0.066

0.032 0.036

0.000 0.069

*Based on the impacts of beauty from Specifications 1 and 2, using ALLBUS(start), with its decompositions in Equation (9a) (9b) based on estimates of a third (fourth) specification that excludes monetary (non-monetary) variables.

Table 5. Average Effects of Beauty on Satisfaction/Happiness, in SDOutcome/SDLooks Units, Six Data Sets, Four Countries*

Good Looks
Men Specification No.: 1. (Gross effect) 2. (Direct effect) Indirect effect: Based on (9a): Monetary Non-monetary Based on (9b): Monetary Non-monetary Women Specification No.: 1. (Gross effect) 2. (Direct effect)

Bad Looks

0.081 0.046 0.035

-0.186 -0.125 -0.061

0.006 0.029

-0.002 -0.059

0.012 0.023

-0.039 -0.022

0.072 0.061 0.011 0.008 0.003

-0.150 -0.134 -0.016 -0.009 -0.007

Indirect effect: Based on (9a): Monetary Non-monetary Based on (9b): Monetary Non-monetary

<0 >0.011

>0 <-0.016

*The gross effects are based on weighted averages of the impacts of beauty from Specification 1, the direct effects on weighted averages of the impacts from Specification 2. The indirect effects are calculated based on the discussion of Equation (8), with its decompositions in Equation (9a) (Equation 9b)) based on estimates of a third (fourth) specification that excludes monetary (non-monetary) variables.

tH tB
47 yrs 44 yrs 35 yrs 26 yrs

0.75 hrs ALLBUS (END) ALLBUS (START)

QAL 0 -0.1 hrs

QOL

NCDS

WLS

-1 hr

Figure 1. Relative Timing of Beauty and Happiness Measures*

*The widths of the bars are proportional to the square root of the number of people evaluating each subjects looks. Their heights indicate the length of time between the evaluation of looks and the eliciting of the subjects satisfaction/happiness, with the scale on the vertical axis necessarily non-linear.

0.2 0.1 Stdev(Happiness / Satisfaction) 0.0 -0.1 -0.2 -0.3 -0.4 -0.5 -0.6 -2.0 -1.5 -1.0 -0.5 0.0 0.5 1.0 1.5 2.0 Stdev(Beauty)
QAL NCDS WLS QOL ALLBUS

Figure 2a. Effects of Beauty on Satisfaction/Happiness, Men, All Data Sets*

*Each point represents one beta-coefficient of the impact of beauty on satisfaction/happiness.

0.2 0.1 0.0 -0.1 -0.2 -0.3 -0.4 -0.5 -0.6 -2.0 -1.5 -1.0 -0.5 0.0 0.5 1.0 1.5 2.0 Stdev(Beauty)

Stdev(Happiness / Satisfaction)

QAL NCDS WLS QOL ALLBUS

Figure 2b. Effects of Beauty on Satisfaction/Happiness, Women, All Data Sets*

*Each point represents one beta-coefficient of the impact of beauty on satisfaction/happiness.

Appendix Table 1a. Descriptive Statistics, QAL71 and QAL78, All Observations with Beauty
Rating, Satisfaction and Happiness Responses*
1971 Women 1978 Women

Men

Men

Good looking Bad looking Life satisfaction

0.265 0.130 5.550

(0.042)

0.307 0.174 5.523

(0.037)

0.341 0.097 82.305

(0.353)

0.354 0.120 81.975

(0.339)

Happiness

2.185
(0.021)

2.194
(0.018)

2.231
(0.015)

2.204
(0.014)

831

1138

1371

1852

*Sample averages with their standard errors for non-binary variables in parentheses here and in Appendix Tables 1b-1e..

Appendix Table 1b. Descriptive Statistics, QOL, 1977-81

Men

Women

Good-looking Bad-looking Life Satisfaction

0.301 0.073 8.661

(0.042)

0.313 0.060 8.820

(0.036)

Happiness

2.382
(0.014)

2.454
(0.013)

N individuals

492

622

Appendix Table 1c. Descriptive Statistics, ALLBUS Germany, 2008, All Usable
Observations* Men
Start End Start

Women
End

Beauty rating

7.324
(0.050)

7.462
(0.048)

7.491
(0.050)

7.612
(0.049)

Happiness

3.047
(0.016)

3.053
(0.016)

1554

1623

Appendix Table 1d. Descriptive Statistics, WLS, All Observations with Beauty Rating,
Satisfaction and Happiness Responses Men 1992 # days happy 5.321
(0.027)

Women 2004 5.673

(0.058)

1992 5.466
(0.054)

2004 5.654
(0.053)

# days enjoyed

5.763
(0.065)

6.040
(0.057)

5.701
(0.057)

5.907
(0.05b)

# days sad

0.668
(0.042)

0.465
(0.037)

1.115
(0.049)

0.841
(0.044)

801

788

993

952

Appendix Table 1e. Descriptive Statistics, NCDS, All Observations with Beauty Rating
Men Attractive age 11 Unattractive age 11 0.501 0.089 Women 0.621 0.095

Men (Age 33) Happiness 3.324

(0.010)

Women

Men (Age 41)

Women

3.389
(0.010)

Life Satisfaction

7.282
(0.031)

7.360
(0.033)

3455

3712

3271

3656

Men (Age 46) Happiness

Women

Men (Age 51) 4.320

(0.022)

Women

4.213
(0.021)

Life Satisfaction

7.530
(0.026)

7.628
(0.027)

7.364
(0.033)

7.348
(0.034)

2886

3231

2622

2928