scientific evidence, why looks matter.

[Finn]

These are the findings from the articel down below

• Uses the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study: white high‑school graduates from 1957, with facial attractiveness rated from yearbook photos and earnings measured repeatedly across adulthood.
• Attractiveness is rated by independent coders on an 11‑point scale; the authors construct standardized “facial attractiveness” scores from these ratings.
• For men, a 1‑standard‑deviation (SD) increase in facial attractiveness predicts about 2% higher annual earnings in the mid‑30s and 3.3% higher earnings in the early‑50s.
• The earnings effect is monotonic: “homely” men earn the least, “average” men more, and “handsome” men the most; there is no evidence that only the extreme categories drive the results.
• For women in this cohort, facial attractiveness has little or no statistically significant effect on earnings once controls are added.
• The male beauty premium remains after controlling for IQ (Henmon–Nelson test), high‑school rank, years of education, parental SES, region, and family structure, so it is not just picking up higher cognitive ability or class background.
• Adding controls for work experience, tenure, occupation, and industry dampens but does not eliminate the effect, meaning attractive men earn more even within similar jobs.
• Facial attractiveness is only weakly related to IQ, school performance, educational attainment, or health measures; these correlations are too small to explain the wage effect.
• More attractive men are significantly more likely to have been involved in varsity sports, student government, and other high‑visibility high‑school activities, but these variables explain only a modest share of the lifetime earnings premium.
• Including psychological variables such as self‑esteem, “purpose in life,” and Big‑Five traits barely changes the coefficient on attractiveness, suggesting that personality does not mediate most of the effect.
• Facial attractiveness shows no meaningful association with mortality risk in this sample; being better‑looking does not noticeably extend life expectancy.
• The authors compare the size of the beauty premium with other well‑known effects and conclude it is similar in magnitude to the economic return to height and smaller than the return to education.
• Overall, the paper concludes that male facial attractiveness is a small but robust and persistent predictor of higher lifetime earnings, operating largely independently of intelligence, schooling, personality, and health.

source: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6261420/

(yes the bullet points were written by AI, just more convenient. the study is worth reading still)