Abstract
Height has long been recognized as being associated with better outcomes: the question is whether this association is causal. We use children's genetic variants as instrumental variables to deal with possible unobserved confounders and examine the effect of child/adolescent height on a wide range of outcomes: academic performance, IQ, self-esteem, depression symptoms and behavioral problems. OLS findings show that taller children have higher IQ, perform better in school, and are less likely to have behavioral problems. The IV results differ: taller girls (but not boys) have better cognitive performance and, in contrast to the OLS, greater height appears to increase behavioral problems.
Highlights
The association between height and wealth has been noted in the academic literature for many decades
To examine and indirectly test the validity of the instrumental variables (IV) approach in our context, we show first that the genetic variants are uncorrelated with a large set of family background variables which may confound the relationship between height and outcomes
This paper is the first to exploit genetic variation in height to examine the causal effects of height on human capital accumulation
Summary
The association between height and wealth has been noted in the academic literature for many decades. Case and Paxson (2008) find that taller children perform better in school tests compared to shorter children and suggest that the relationship between childhood height and income and education in adulthood is due to height being associated with greater intelligence. Height is influenced by a wide range of environmental factors experienced in childhood which may be the determinants of the outcomes, rather than height per se, for example, unobserved family wealth or differences in children’s nutrition. Case and Paxson (2010) use this approach, exploiting differences between siblings. They conclude that taller children perform better in school, progress faster through school and consider themselves more scholastically competent than their shorter siblings
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