Height and Labor Market Outcome: Evidence from Panel Data

Previous studies show that tall people have better labor market outcomes, but controlling for their abilities reduces the size of height effects. This implies that a failure to properly control for one’s ability could overestimate the OLS estimate. This paper contributes to the literature by being the first to control for individual fixed effects (FE) and to examine height effects on the probability of one’s attaining a leadership position. The data used are panel data of a cohort obtained during the cohort’s middle and high school years. In OLS estimation, this paper finds positive height effects for boys. However, when controlling for individual fixed effects, the estimate is not statistically significant. For girls, the height effects are found on neither OLS nor FE model.