How often is the wife taller than the husband? | Hacker News Reader

How often is the wife taller than the husband?

statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu

33 pointsluu25 comments

The statement about shorter men earning less ("shorter men don’t marry as often, in part because they earn less") was surprising to me and I decided to investigate.

I saw similar statements elsewhere[1]:

> A 2020 study in the scientific journal PLOS One analyzed economic data from over 3,500 Chinese adults and found that every additional centimeter of height was correlated with a 1.3% increase in a person's annual income.

And in another place[2], a 1984–2005 study:

> Results at mean values for males indicate that being 10 cm taller is associated with (...) a $1874–2306 income premium

Fingers crossed for remote work bringing some sort of equalizer effect here.

[1]: https://www.salon.com/2023/01/19/shorter-height-lower-salari...

[2]: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S15706...

I wonder how much of that is internal vs external. For example, if taller people have higher self confidence / belief that they should earn more they might be more likely to ask for a raise, move to a higher paying job, or start their own company. The external side could be something like, taller people are more intimidating or likeable and thus have easier time getting what they asked for.

Relatedly, less attractive people earn significantly less

Pay equity is and should be about helping unlucky people be more lucky. One cannot choose to not be a class that receives lower compensation inherently.

Looking forward the the HR role specializing in telling you that you are ugly but because of it you get a 5% pay bump.

Or the after interview meeting where your potential coworkers try and decide if they don't want you due to a skill issue or just because you are ugly.

Or ignore the physical human attributes and pay based on metrics and performance? I’m aware, unlikely to ever occur.

Sure I am all for that, that's the way it should be of course.

In aome industries blind interviewing is the norm, and it solves those issues quite well.

Anecdotally, I interviewed and hired an entire team during the pandemic and most applicants chose to go camera off. It’s turned out great.

> Fingers crossed for remote work bringing some sort of equalizer effect here.

I work at a fully-remote company, and my org had a meetup soon after I first started working here. I was surprised to see how many of the people I work with seemed to be below average height. I've never really done anything to verify it, but I have a hunch based on that anecdata that the median height at my fully-remote company might be lower than the median height of the US population and/or lower than the median height at similarly-sized enterprises that have in-person hiring and work.

I then further wonder how much of that difference relates to early childhood nutrition (which would presumably directly affect both height and perhaps directly affects and indirectly correlates with other non-height attributes).

I'm curious how these studies consider factors like race and ethnic background. In the US for example, Latinos earn less than whites for a lot of reasons. Latino men are also shorter overall than white men. But we can think of a lot of relevant reasons Latino men might earn less than white men in the US before we'd start thinking about specific physical characteristics.

They probably just wing it, come up with an assumption and never revisit it.

You’re assuming that all of this is caused by employers having a bias against shorter people. What if shorter people are simply less healthy on average, say, because of the countless genetic disorders, such as Down syndrome, that result in a shorter stature AND other developmental problems?

Shorter men need to be richer or funnier I guess if they want a taller wife.

This is a fantastic write-up. They take a number that sounds incredibly biased, "woah 1/40 pour one out for the short kings" and shows how this is predicted by only the distribution of men/women's heights and that despite the preference among women for taller men and men for shorter women the effect isn't enough to move the number away from what you would get with random partner selection.

Related question: how often does the wife earn a higher salary? Answer here: https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2023/04/13/in-a-gr...

The author of the Columbia post dug through all the papers and found the statistics were based on a small and unrepresentative sample of married couples. Eg the sample set said the median men’s height is 5’11” which is much higher than the American average.

Garbage in. Garbage out.

Real women don't need taller husbands.

Real men don't care if they have to take out tall(er) statuesque blondes.

It would be interesting to look at age ranges of preferences here, I predict that the older the men and women being studied, the less body height is important.

I guess you are being lighthearted, but you are also kind of contemptuously dismissing human culture.

The relative heights of spouses is an important matter, about which nearly everyone has strong feelings and which is the subject of social judgement. It is never a random variable.

Sometimes I feel like I’m the only person who actually lives among humans and knows what they are like.

My wife is a tall statuesque blonde. In her late 40’s, she still gets hit on by guys 30+.

Granted, she used to get hit on by guys 18+.

How tall are you?

165 cm (5'6")

My wife is about 175 cm (5'9"), and yes, she is blonde.

Tldr: how reliable are sociology papers

Rarely I think - taller women generally have a harder time finding a partner.

> "Mate" has this anthropological, scientistic feel to it.

Every trait discussed here is being selected for. There are evolutionary pressures at play here regardless of how complicated you think our social and cognitive functions are, when the outcome isn’t complicated.

Any sex linked trait that promotes height is being selected for on the X chromosome.

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