Link: http://www.economist.com/research/articlesBySubject/displaystory.cfm?subjectid=348918&story_id=10958949
Economics focus
Feet, dollars and inches
Apr 3rd 2008From The Economist print edition
The intriguing relationship between height and income
Summary - It talks about the the relationship between height, and income (or standard of living, to be more precise). The study is sparked off by Britain's factory laws in the 1800s, where medical inspectors had to certify that a child was old enough and strong enough to work. To cut costs, manufacturers tried to propose a cheaper shortcut: measuring a child's height to establish age and stamina.
However, the variation of height across individuals means that it cannot be used to identify the individual, or to make any further inference. "Mr Roberts could say that the average height of 11-year-old boys was 52½ inches, but not that this boy of 52½ inches was 11."
Yet, two recent studies have shown that the "tallest quarter of the population earns 9-10% more than the shortest quarter", so the manufacturer's were somewhat right to say that taller people were on average more employable. This is true even in today's knowledge-based economy in developed countries like America.
It seems that height adds to income, and the converse applies as well. There are, however, exceptions, such as when Uganda citizens are compared to those in India, where the former are poorer and taller than the latter. The article explains this by saying that height rises with prosperity, but at a diminishing rate, tracing an arc as income rises. "Stature is hence a good measure of deprivation but not of opulence", since "earning enough to buy plentiful calories and protein makes a big difference to stature", but once this is reached, the marginal increase in income makes less of a difference. It seems that height is also positively related to equality among Man.
Analysis/Reflections:
I thought this was a really interesting article, on many economics-related levels actually. Firstly, height-income arc reminds me of the Law of Diminishing Marginal Returns! Like, the extra unit of income results in decreasing marginal increases to height, like how the extra unit of the variable factors results in decreasing amounts of marginal product. However, in this article's context, the marginal 'returns' will not be negative, just decreasing.
Secondly, it's an interesting facet of Economics, using economic data to correlate with biological, physical data. This article does exemplify cross-discipline research, and it seems even more important for us to acknowledge the existence of such research/studies since we are Science students taking an Arts subject, even though this demarcation is quite arbitrary. Maybe seeing the (possible) relevance of Economics in the fields we seem to be more inclined to/interested in currently will inspire us to study Econs even more! Haha.
Thirdly, the whole cause-effect relationship that is attempted to be stablished here between height and income/standard of living is a quite an important concept in Economics. Look at Theory of Demand and Supply, it's all about cause and effects. In Size of Firms, the advantages acrrued to firms when they are big or small are both the causes and effects of their size. For example, being big allows you to increase revenue, since you can sell higher quantity of output, so this is an effect of being big. However, this is also somewhat a cause/incentive to be big, since increased revenue helps you to increase quantity sold through product innovation (R&D) and advertisements and such.
Hence, this article may seem a bit frivalous and maybe pointless. And you may be wondering why on earth is it in The Economist. Well, I hope my few thoughts may have helped to enlighten you and help us see things from a different perspective! :)
posted by chan yi. @ 8:48 PM
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