Height and subjective well-being in Italy § Vincenzo Carrieri a, *, Maria De Paola b a Department of Economics and Statistics and CELPE, University of Salerno, Italy b Department of Economics and Statistics, University of Calabria, Italy 1. Introduction Being tall is associated with a number of advantages. Tall people (excluding the extremely tall) are more likely to have a long term partner and to have children (Nettle, 2002a,b); they attain higher levels of education (Magnusson et al., 2006) and receive higher wages than shorter people, even after controlling for the level of education acquired, the type of job performed (Persico et al., 2004; Herpin, 2005; Heineck, 2006; Case and Paxson, 2008; Hu ¨ bler, 2009; Cinnirella et al., 2011) and irrespective of the physical strenuousness of the job (Bockerman et al., 2010). In addition, they have more chance of playing sports at a professional level or becoming supermodels (Saint Onge et al., 2008). 1 Height seems to have a strong inverse association with suicide risk (Magnusson et al., 2005) and it is also positively associated with life expectancy (Koch, 2011). All these findings together seem to indicate that there is more chance of tall people enjoying a better life. This is confirmed by some empirical papers that find a positive correlation between height and subjective well-being (Keyes, 1980; Cohen, 2009; Rees et al., 2009; Deaton and Arora, 2009; Denny, 2010). As height is also associated with some costs, for example expenses for special clothes, high ceiling homes, the relationship between height and well-being is probably an inverse U. However, the reasons for which tall people enjoy better lives are quite controversial. Disentangling the channels through which height affects well-being is complicated. Researchers are typically not able to observe all the factors affecting an individual’s well-being and height may be correlated to some unobserved individual characteristics which may lead to a spurious correlation. For example, many empirical investigations show a strong effect of height on well-being, which vanishes or is reduced once individual income, education and health conditions are controlled for (Deaton and Arora, 2009; Denny, 2010; Steckel, 1995; Strauss and Thomas, 1998). Why, though, are taller people better educated, better paid and in better Economics and Human Biology 10 (2012) 289–298 A R T I C L E I N F O Article history: Received 23 June 2011 Received in revised form 27 December 2011 Accepted 27 December 2011 Available online 3 January 2012 JEL classification: D6 I10 I30 Keywords: Height Social comparison Subjective well-being A B S T R A C T Using an Italian survey, we investigate the effect of height on individual happiness. We find that a large part of the effect of height on well-being is driven by a positive correlation between height and economic and health conditions. However, for young men the effect of height on happiness persists even after controlling for these variables, implying that height is associated with some psycho-social direct effects on well-being. Consistent with this hypothesis, we find that men care not only about their own height but also about the height of others in their reference group. Well-being is greater for individuals who are taller than other men in their reference group. Results are robust to different definitions of reference group and controlling for a number of other reference group characteristics. ß 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. § We would like to thank Siliana Congiurato, Edoardo Di Porto, Leandro Elia, Nick Powdthavee, all the participants at the 2011 Italian Health Economics Association Annual Conference, the Editor John Komlos and four anonymous referees for useful comments and suggestions. * Corresponding author at: Department of Economics and Statistics and CELPE, Via Ponte Don Melillo, 84084 Fisciano (SA), Italy. E-mail address: vcarrieri@unisa.it (V. Carrieri). 1 Tall people also do better in political competitions, given that, in US presidential elections over the last one hundred years, the taller candidate received more popular votes in 88% of the elections, and won 84% of the times (Sorowski, 2010). Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect Economics and Human Biology jo u rn al ho m epag e: h ttp ://ww w.els evier.c o m/lo cat e/ehb 1570-677X/$ – see front matter ß 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.ehb.2011.12.002