Among both men and women, roughly half are rated as average, and many more are rated above-average than are viewed as below-average. Either Canadians are better-looking than Americans, or Canadian interviewers are less willing to describe someone as having below-average looks. What is most interesting is that the ratings of women are more dispersed around the middle category(Biddle and Hamermesh, 1994).
All three surveys offer a variety of measures of earnings. In all of them hourly earnings were calculated as annual earnings divided by 52 times weekly hours. Other variables defined for the analyses of hourly earnings and included in all three data sets are marital status, education, defined as a vector of dummy variables measuring high-school completion, some college, or a college degree or more and one-digit industry. Self-reported health status is included in all the regressions. Most important, anyone whose health status in the QES is listed as "totally and permanently disabled" or the next most severe category on a seven-point subjective scale is excluded from all the empirical work. In the QAL, a respondent is excluded if health prevents him/her from doing lots of things, while in the QOL anyone whose self-reported health status is not at least rated as fair is excluded. These exclusions minimize any results stemming from a possible correlation between physical appearance and major physical disabilities that reduce productivity in the market. The purpose was to isolate the effect of beauty on earnings by controlling for as many other causes of variation in earnings as possible(Biddle and Hamermesh, 1994.).
There were estimates of earnings equations based on the relationship of looks and earnings. In all six groups people with above average looks receive a pay premia, ranging from as little as one percent to a high estimate of thirteen percent (for women in the QAL). In five groups (excluding only women in the QAL), workers with below-average looks receive a pay penalty, ranging from one percent to as much as fifteen percent.
