Fatter attraction: anthropometric and socioeconomic matching ... - Ivie

WP-AD 2010-23
Fatter attraction: anthropometric
and socioeconomic matching
on the marriage market *
Pierre-André Chiappori, Sonia Oreffice
and Climent Quintana-Domeque **
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 sorting and trade-offs among these
characteristics using data from the PSID, finding evidence of compensation
between anthropometric and socioeconomic characteristics for both genders,
and of equality of these marginal rates of substitution across traits. Among men, a
10% increase in BMI can be compensated by a higher wage, the supplement
being estimated to be around 3%. Similarly, for women, an additional year of
education may compensate up to three BMI units.
Keywords: BMI, marriage market, wages, education.
JEL Classification: D1, J1.
*
We thank José Alcalde, Coralio Ballester, Lola Collado, Marco González-Navarro, Iñigo Iturbe,
Costas Meghir, Juan Mora, Bernard Salanié, Enrique Sentana and the participants at the
University of Edinburgh, Universitat d'Alacant, Clemson University, Università di Firenze, Tilburg
University, and Università di Padova seminars. Previous versions of this paper circulated as
FEDEA working paper # 2009-34 and IZA discussion paper 4594. Oreffice and Quintana-
Domeque acknowledge financial support from the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation
(ECO 2008-05721/ECON). Errors are ours.
*
P.A. Chiappori: Columbia University. S. Oreffice: Universitat d’Alacant and IZA. C. Quintana-
Domeque: Universitat d’Alacant. Contact author: climent@ua.es.
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