Abstract
Abstract Abstract We explore the relationship between relative physical attractiveness in the household and the hours worked by married men and women. Using PSID data, we find that husbands who are thinner relative to their wives work fewer hours, while wives who are heavier relative to their husbands work more hours. These results are robust to controlling for individual, spousal characteristics, and conventional distribution factors, suggesting that high body weight leads to low Pareto weight in the household: fatter spouses may compensate with more hours of work. Our household bargaining interpretation is supported by the fact that we cannot statistically reject the collective proportionality restriction when including measures of the distribution of relative physical attractiveness in the population. JEL codes D1, J1, J22
Highlights
Economists have been inquiring about the determinants of labor supply, the intrahousehold allocation of resources, and the economic impact of physical attractiveness for decades
We explore the relationship of relative physical attractiveness within the household and the hours worked by married men and women, proxied by their relative body mass index (BMI, weight-for-height)
5 Conclusions Our paper relies on the simple idea that body weight and Pareto weight are negatively related, i.e., relative physical attractiveness matters for the intra-household allocation of resources, and for the hours worked by both spouses
Summary
Economists have been inquiring about the determinants of labor supply, the intrahousehold allocation of resources, and the economic impact of physical attractiveness for decades. We explore the relationship of relative physical attractiveness within the household and the hours worked by married men and women, proxied by their relative body mass index (BMI, weight-for-height). While own weight (BMI) has already been linked to labor supply (Lakdawalla and Philipson 2007; Loh 2009), evidence from psychology explicitly points to fatness being stigmatized by spouses, and that social pressures for slimness affect marital interaction (Sobal 1995) It is the relative attractiveness within the couple which is thought to affect household behavior. Viewing relative physical attractiveness through the lens of a collective labor supply framework allows us to investigate its relationship with hours of work of both married men and women In such a context, relatively high body weight transforms into low Pareto weight in the household, inducing individuals to compensate for their negative physical trait by working more hours, while their spouses work less.
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