Beauty and the Labor Market - Study One Specific Occupation

Abstract

This paper tries to verify the impact of physical appearance on the salespeople's wage of Brasilia's shopping malls. The fact that we studied a specific occupation can be understood as a progression in this field of literature. The results showed the abscense of wage discrimination related to physical appearance arisen from customer's behavior. Furthermore, the results suggest that women with good appearance receive a reward of approximately 9% in their earnings. However, this reward is related to productivity and not with discrimination. In this way, this seems to be an indication that beauty is linked to productivity in the salespeople labor market.

Keywords: Discrimination against physical appearance, beauty, labor market , wage discrimination

JEL Classification: J7, J82