Feet, Dollars and Inches

The intriguing relationship between height and income

The relationship between genetics and environment is uncertain. Certainly there are substantial relationships in the general heights of biological families; and the heights of parents and family are a fairly good predictor for the height of their children. However, as cited, there is strong environmental influence as well. Research shows that shorter people are more likely to be victims of bullying. Because bullying during childhood and adolescence often undermines the victim’s self-esteem, some researchers speculate that the lower levels of achievement of shorter people (particularly men) in later life may be partly or largely explained by this lower self esteem rather than by discrimination.

Heightism in employment

Some jobs do require or at least favor tall people, including some manual labor jobs, most professional sports, and fashion modeling. U.S. military pilots have to be 64 to 77 inches (163 to 196 cm) tall with a sitting height of 34 to 40 inches (86 to 102 cm). These exceptions noted, in the great majority of cases a person’s height would not seem to have an effect on how well they are able to perform their job. Nevertheless, studies have shown that short people are paid less than taller people, with disparities similar in magnitude to the race and gender gaps.

Some epidemiological studies have shown that intelligence is positively correlated, albeit very slightly, with height in human populations. This does not imply that many short people are not highly intelligent, or that changes in physical height have a direct effect on cognitive ability. Intelligence is believed to be influenced by many different factors. Individuals with a wide range of intelligence can be observed at any given height. It may be that good childhood nutrition tends to result in greater adult height, and good childhood nutrition also tends to result in higher adult intelligence. A recent study using four data sets from the US and UK found that, after controlling for differences in cognitive test scores, there was no detectable independent effect of height itself on adult earnings. It did indicate that intelligence influences earnings. Taller people, on average are more intelligent because environmental factors such as nutrition during childhood, also influences intelligence. The study concludes that on average, taller people do not earn more just because of their physical height.

Others believe that height has a significant independent impact on economic success, pointing to specific instances of height-based discrimination. Surveys of attitudes do reveal that people both perceive and treat people of shorter stature as inferior, and that economic differentials exist which may be the result of height discrimination. The relationship between height, cognitive ability, and discrimination based on height remains a subject of debate.

I.

“Pale and haggard faces, lank and bony figures, children with the countenances of old men, deformities with irons upon their limbs, boys of stunted growth, and others whose long meagre legs would hardly bear their stooping bodies, all crowded on the view together; there were the bleared eye, the hare-lip, the crooked foot, and every ugliness or distortion that told of unnatural aversion conceived by parents for their offspring, or of young lives which, from the earliest dawn of infancy, had been one horrible endurance of cruelty and neglect. There were little faces which should have been handsome, darkened with the scowl of sullen, dogged suffering; there was childhood with the light of its eye quenched, its beauty gone, and its helplessness alone remaining”.

Charles Dickens's wrenching accounts of child labour helped to inspire a series of factory laws in 19th-century Britain. Indeed, by the 1870s factory owners claimed that it was they who were stooping under the burden of regulation. The new laws required a medical inspector to certify that a child was old enough and strong enough to work. Unhappy about the cost of these examinations, the manufacturers proposed a cheaper shortcut: a quick measure of a child's height to establish his age and stamina.

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. They though that the taller those children were the stronger they had to be. It seems that the idea of associating height with strength has an origin even in literature, when Dickens wrote about the inhabitants of Dotheboyes Halls.

Altought these words were written in London in 1839, Dickens could have been writing about present-day Central America. It is shocking to see that these conditions still exist in our world We could say that even today, some factory owners do not require a medical inspector to certify that a child is old enough and strong enough to work. They just take a look over the employee’s body (which includes height, weight, muscles, sex, age) to establish whether he has enough strength to accomplish his duty. But this is not a rule.

II.

In 1876 Charles Roberts, an inspector, reported the statures of about 10,000 children, drawn from the registers of London military hospitals and his own tallies in Lancashire, Yorkshire and Cheshire. It was one of the first sophisticated statistical inquiries into the economics of height. Later scholars have explored the economic determinants of height (rich people are taller, on average), its economic consequences (tall people are richer, on average), and the clues it gives about a society's standard of living.

"A developed country is one that allows all its citizens to enjoy a free and healthy life in a safe environment." (Kofi Annan)

A developing country is a country that has low standards of democratic governments, industrialization, social programs, and human rights guarantees for its citizens. It is a nation with a low level of material while being.

The development of a country is measured with statistical indexes such as income per capita (per person) (GDP), life expectancy, the rate of literacy, et cetera. The UN has developed the HDI, a compound indicator of the above statistics, to gauge the level of human development for countries where data is available.

Developing countries are in general countries which have not achieved a significant degree of industrialization relative to their populations, and which have, in most cases a medium to low standard of living. There is a strong correlation between low income and high population growth.

Description Countries based on World Bank income groupings for 2006 (calculated by GNI per capita, Atlas method).

- High income

- Upper-middle income

- Lower-middle income

- Low income

Date 12 April 2008

When comparing the Developed Countries with the Developing Countries, there are some factors to keep an eye on.