Obese 16-year-old girls and short 16 year-old-boys earn less money than others at the age of 23, according to a new survey of more than 10,000 British children by a pair of Dartmouth researchers.
The study says important things about British and American society and how "appearance affects how you fare in the labor market" said Dr. James Sargent, a pediatrics professor at the Dartmouth Medical School, and one of the authors of the study.
Sargent co-authored the study, published in the July issue of the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, with Economics Professor David Blanchflower.
"The effects are very important just as people enter the labor market," Blanchflower told the Associated Press last Wednesday. "It looks like that early stage is crucial."
According to Sargent, controlling for other effects on salary, the research showed that the top 10 percent of obese girls ended up earning 7.5 percent less than non-obese girls with similar backgrounds and education.
Sargent said this held true for women who were not obese by the time they were 23. But, women who were thin at 16, did not have lower wages at 23, even if they became obese.
He said the obesity effect only affected one's future salary if the woman was obese when she was 16.
There is "something about the timing of this" when women are "entering the labor market," he said.
According to Sargent, 95 percent of British people enter the work force at age 16.
Sargent said he and Blanchflower could not conclude in the survey whether the obesity effect was due to "discrimination or something going on internally."
He said psychological factors, like obese teenagers having less self-confidence, might explain their receiving lower wages.
"We can't say what it is exactly," he said. "It's one or the other or both of those factors."
But, Sargent said, "More of the problem at Dartmouth College is the opposite. This is part of the same phenomenon."
Women who know "appearance makes a difference in our society" are afraid of obesity and sometimes end up with eating disorders, he said.
"Women are probably smarter than professors or doctors. They know that if they're obese they don't do as well," he said, so they try very hard to not be obese.
"It's a very important problem," he said.
Sargent said the connection between obesity and wages occurred only in women.
"Obesity didn't make any difference at all in men," he said.
For men, Sargent said, height played a role in future salaries.
The study showed short boys earned less than tall boys by the time they turned 23, he said.
Men who were five 5-foot- 3 earned 3 percent less than those who were 5-foot-5. They, in turn, made 3 percent less than those who were 5-foot-10. They earned 3 percent less than those who were 6-foot-3.
"I think we see large men as more powerful and I think that smaller, shorter, more diminutive men aren't seen as competent as taller men," Sargent said.
The study's data is based on research on 12,537 people in Britain who were born on the same week in March 1958.
The people were interviewed and examined at ages 7, 11, 16 and 23.