Fatter Attraction: Anthropometric and Socioeconomic Characteristics in the Marriage Market
35 Pages Posted: 8 Dec 2009
Abstract
We construct a matching model on the marriage market along more than one characteristic, where individuals have preferences over physical attractiveness (proxied by anthropometric characteristics) and market and household productivity of potential mates (proxied by socioeconomic characteristics), with a certain degree of substitutability between them. Men and women assess each other through an index combining these various attributes, so the matching is one-dimensional. We estimate the trade-offs among these characteristics using data from the PSID and the ECHP, finding evidence of compensation between anthropometric and socioeconomic characteristics. An additional unit of husband's (wife's) BMI can be compensated by a 0.3%-increase (0.15%-increase) in husband's (wife's) average (predicted) wage. Interestingly, these findings suggest that female physical attractiveness plays a larger role in men's assessment of a woman than male physical attractiveness does for women.
Keywords: BMI, height, wages, earnings, marriage market
JEL Classification: D1, J1
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation
Do you have a job opening that you would like to promote on SSRN?
Recommended Papers
-
What Makes You Click? Mate Preferences and Matching Outcomes in Online Dating
By Günter J. Hitsch, Ali Hortacsu, ...
-
Matching and Sorting in Online Dating
By Günter J. Hitsch, Ali Hortacsu, ...
-
Marry for What? Caste and Mate Selection in Modern India
By Abhijit V. Banerjee, Esther Duflo, ...
-
Marry for What: Caste and Mate Selection in Modern India
By Abhijit V. Banerjee, Esther Duflo, ...
-
Marry for What? Caste and Mate Selection in Modern India
By Abhijit V. Banerjee, Esther Duflo, ...
-
Marry for What? Caste and Mate Selection in Modern India
By Abhijit V. Banerjee, Esther Duflo, ...
-
Wage Differentials between the Public and the Private Sectors in India
By Elena Glinskayai and Michael Lokshin
-
Matching with Trade-Offs: Revealed Preferences Over Competing Characteristics
By Alfred Galichon and Bernard Salanie