Tuesday, September 30, 2014 | 12:30pm-1:30pm | Room 237, HSBC Business School Building

Abstract

Many desirable traits: income, education, and health, are correlated with height. However, most studies of marriage or dating do not control for height and these other qualities simultaneously. Even when attempts have been made to control for the effect of height in speed dating experiments, choice may reflect spontaneous qualities (“chemistry”) rather than fixed characteristics observable to the researcher. We contribute to this literature by randomly assigning heights and incomes to 360 unique artificial profiles on a major online dating website in China. We then recorded nearly 4000 “visits”—clicks on abbreviated profiles, which include height and income information, from search engine results. The incomes of our visitors were highly correlated with their heights. Men's incomes increased by 24% while women's by 15% for every 1 inch increase in height. There was both vertical and horizontal matching; tall men preferring and being preferred by tall women; who were both preferred by medium women and men, respectively. Men were indifferent to women's incomes, but women preferred higher income men. Interestingly, short women were most willing to trade-off mate income for mate height. This suggests that women's marginal utility for height may be inversely related to their own and that they may be matching also for their future children's sake.