The Reality of Attractiveness Bias

From the paper linked in the blog:

" Physical attractiveness is an important axis of social stratification associated with educational attainment, marital patterns, earnings, and more. Still, relative to ethnoracial and gender stratification, physical attractiveness is relatively understudied. In particular, little is known about whether returns to physical attractiveness vary by race...the magnitude of the earnings disparities along the perceived attractiveness continuum, net of controls, rivals and/or exceeds in magnitude the black-white race gap and, among African-Americans, the black-white race gap and the gender gap in earnings. [...] The returns to attractiveness among Black women, for instance, are so immense, that the earnings of the most attractive Black women appear to converge or even overlap those of white women of similar levels of attractiveness. Notably, the returns to perceived physical attractiveness, in terms of real dollars, are similar between White males and Black females even though Black females make significantly less than White males on average. Similarly, the returns to attractiveness among Black men are quite substantial as well, though not enough to see a convergence or cross-over with white men. Among Black women and Black men, the wage penalties associated with perceived physical attractiveness are also so substantial that, taken together, the earnings disparity between the least and most physically attractive exceeds in magnitude both the Black-White wage gap and the gender gap. "