Andrey Kamenov, Ph.D. Probability and Statistics
One of the frequently overlooked issues with income inequality is height discrimination. There’s enough statistical evidence showing that taller people earn more on average than their shorter colleagues.
We’re going to visualize this inequality to get a better look at the issue.
The first chart shows the median income numbers for the population split into 10 equally-sized groups.
As you can see, the difference in median income between the tallest 10 percent of the population and the shortest 10 percent is quite large. In fact, the former earn 50 percent more.
Median income by height rank and gender
Most of the difference, however, seems to be caused by lower income numbers for people with below-average height. The gains become significantly smaller for men taller than 5 feet 9 inches and for women above 5 feet 4 inches.
A note on the methodology: the survey data only contains an income bracket, not the actual income value. We’ve mitigated the issue in our usual way – by fitting the specific income distribution (GB2) to the binned data.
In the following chart, we limit ourselves to just three classes: the tallest third of the population, the shortest third, and anyone in between. Let’s see if there is an income gap between the former two in your state. Again, we’re using median income values for their robustness.
Income gap for the taller people
It looks like the income gap is universal - the difference is statistically significant in almost every state for both genders. The patterns are slightly different, though. The gap is generally smaller for women in the southeastern states. At the same time, taller men are paid significantly more in Texas and Florida.
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About Andrey Kamenov
Andrey Kamenov, Ph.D. Probability and Statistics
Andrey Kamenov is a data scientist working for Advameg Inc. His background includes teaching statistics, stochastic processes and financial mathematics in Moscow State University and working for a hedge fund. His academic interests range from statistical data analysis to optimal stopping theory. Andrey also enjoys his hobbies of photography, reading and powerlifting.
Other posts by Andrey Kamenov:
Interesting enough. Taller people are preferred in management positions due to advantage in height.
While of course, height alone does not mean that a person is ‘fit’ to be a manager as there are plenty of others who are capable, it’s the ‘image’ unfortunately that is looked at more.