The Beauty of Inequality

Scientific literature shows that beautiful people can earn higher wages, are more likely to be employed, and are viewed as more trustworthy. This column examines the relationship between physical attractiveness and support for income redistribution. In a new study, I show that an increase in physical attractiveness is associated with a decrease in supporting income redistribution. Beauty is also positively associated with beliefs that economic success is mainly driven by individual effort rather than external circumstances and with voting for parties with an anti-redistribution policy. These findings are not fully explained by labor market outcomes, gender differences, parental background, or self-confidence.

During the last decades, scientific literature has shown that beauty increases a vast number of societal outcomes. Beautiful people have higher chances to be employed (Harper, 2000; Kromann, 2015), earn higher wages (Hamermesh and Biddle, 1994; Mobius and Rosenblat, 2006), and tend to be happier (Hamermesh and Abrevaya, 2013). Beautiful people have higher access (Ravina et al., 2008) and are able to charge higher prices on Air BnB (Jaeger et al., 2019). In politics, good-looking people have higher chances to be elected (Berggren et al., 2010), and even among economists, beautiful individuals get more citations and are more likely to be hired from high-ranked universities (Hale et al., 2021).