Sex, Drugs and Economics: More attractive people prefer less redistribution than less attractive people

Friday 16 December 2022

More attractive people prefer less redistribution than less attractive people

The beauty premium is well established in labour economics (see the links at the end of this post for some examples). More attractive people earn more than less attractive people, ceteris paribus (holding everything else equal). That means that differences in attractiveness give rise to differences in income, and contribute to income inequality. The main policy means that governments use to deal with inequality is redistribution (and predistribution, but we need not get into the difference between those terms here). Redistribution would then tend to undo some of the beauty premium. So, it would be interesting to know how more attractive people feel about redistribution, compared with less attractive people.

That question is essentially what this recent article by Andrea Fazio (University of Pavia), published in the journal Economics and Human Biology (ungated earlier version here) looks at. Fazio uses data from the German General Social Survey (ALLBUS) over the period from 2008 to 2018. Survey respondents were asked about their level of agreement with each of the following statements:

• “Income and wealth should be redistributed towards ordinary people".

• “Income should not be based solely on individual achievement. Instead, everybody should have what they and their family need for a decent life".

• “The state must ensure that people can live on a decent income, even in illness, hardship, unemployment and old age".

• “What one gets in life depends not so much on one’s own efforts, but on the economic situation, the situation on the employment market, wage agreements, and the social benefits provided by the state".

The first statement was asked about in the 2008 and 2018 survey waves, and the last three statements were asked about in the 2010 and 2014 survey waves. Attractiveness was rated by the survey interviewers at the start of each interview, on a scale from 1 to 11. Regressing support for redistribution on attractiveness, while controlling for individual characteristics, reveals that:

...a one standard deviation increase in attractiveness is associated with a 0.8 decrease in preferences for redistribution, while a one standard deviation increase in household income is associated with a 0.15 decrease in preferences for redistribution. In other words, the magnitude of the association between beauty and support for redistribution is half the association between household income and support for redistribution...

Most importantly, these results suggest that the correlation between preferences for redistribution and attractiveness is not fully explained by the beauty premium in the labor market...

Fazio finds similar results for the measures based on agreement with the other three statements, and some suggestive evidence that attractiveness is associated with voting behaviour (with more attractive people more likely to vote for the Free Democratic Party (FDP), and:

...albeit being a minor party, the FDP is a liberal center-right party proposing a market-oriented economy. It opposes the state intervention in the economy and advocates for a radical tax reduction...

That seems somewhat self-serving, but Fazio goes a bit further exploring the mechanisms that might drive more attractive people to prefer less redistribution, and finds that personality differences (measured by the 'Big Five' personality traits) and self-esteem don't explain it. That leaves Fazio to conclude that:

Perhaps, the relationship between attractiveness and redistributive preferences might depend on how attractive individuals rationalize the success they gain thanks to their beauty. An example can be the self-serving bias, i.e., people tend to attribute success to their own actions and failure to external factors. Attractiveness improves a considerable number of socio-economic outcomes, but good-looking subjects might hardly recognize that part of their success depends on their beauty.

It's an interesting conjecture, but Fazio isn't able to test it. People are able to rationalise all sorts of things. Perhaps this is one that could be tested by follow-up experimental work? In the meantime, all that we can conclude is that attractive people earn more, they prefer less redistribution, and their preferences for less redistribution are over-and-above the effect of income on preferences for redistribution.

[HT: Marginal Revolution, via this PsyPost article]