Using data from three waves of Add Health we find that being very attractive reduces a young adult's (ages 18-26) propensity for criminal activity and being unattractive increases it for a number of crimes, ranging from burglary to selling drugs. A variety of tests demonstrate that this result is not because beauty is acting as a proxy for socio-economic status. Being very attractive is also positively associated adult vocabulary test scores, which suggests the possibility that beauty may have an impact on human capital formation. We demonstrate that, especially for females, holding constant current beauty, high school beauty (pre-labor market beauty) has a separate impact on crime, and that high school beauty is correlated with variables that gauge various aspects of high school experience, such as GPA, suspension or having being expelled from school, and problems with teachers. These results suggest two handicaps faced by unattractive individuals. First, a labor market penalty provides a direct incentive for unattractive individuals toward criminal activity. Second, the level of beauty in high school has an effect on criminal propensity 7-8 years later, which seems to be due to the impact of the level of beauty in high school on human capital formation, although this second avenue seems to be effective for females only.
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Paper provided by Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) in its series IZA Discussion Papers with number
2048.
Naci Mocan & Erdal Tekin, 2006.
"Ugly Criminals,"
NBER Working Papers
12019, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
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Find related papers by JEL classification: I1 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health I2 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education K4 - Law and Economics - - Legal Procedure, the Legal System, and Illegal Behavior J2 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor J3 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs
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Hamermesh, Daniel S & Biddle, Jeff E, 1994.
"Beauty and the Labor Market,"
American Economic Review,
American Economic Association, vol. 84(5), pages 1174-94, December.
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Markus M. Mobius & Tanya S. Rosenblat, 2006.
"Why Beauty Matters,"
American Economic Review,
American Economic Association, vol. 96(1), pages 222-235, March.
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