November 29, 2006--The Height Premium
I always thought my family overemphasized tallness.
With the exception of my father, the only family member of his generation not to have been born in either Poland or Russia, no one was much taller than five-four (just one or two uncles) and most of my aunts on a good day could barely stretch themselves out to five-feet even.
And the next generation didn’t fare much better, with the exception of my brother and me. That in itself was significant—though there were more financially successful members of the family, my parents were twice privileged: they had two sons (some of their contemporaries had only daughters, no others had more than one son) and both of us reached six feet by the time we were 15 and kept growing—my brother to about six-three, me to about six-five.
The most affluent family members had either only daughters (as many as three) or had short offspring. In truth, I felt that I was more a freak of nature than blessed, while everyone else looked at my brother and me and felt, in our tallness, that we alone had fulfilled their hoped-for American Dream. Yes, those who made money fulfilled one important aspect of it, but Len and I were the only ones who could truly assimilate. And thus if and when the Nazis inevitably came looking for the Jews they would leave us alone because we would somehow pass for gentiles or for being “Real Americans,” especially if we had a little plastic surgery along the way—I will here not tell those stories!
So when the NY Times reported about studies linking tallness with success, I assumed that they had found us out and that life for Len and me suddenly would become much more dangerous. Particularly since there is a eugenics component to some of the research. And we know all too well where eugenics in the past has led!
The earliest attempt to equate tallness with success, actually intelligence, was a mid-nineteenth century interest in selective breeding that would produce taller and thus genetically superior individuals. Happily, try as they did, these early "scientists" could not prove the correlation--though this did not stop the Nazis from putting it into practice some years later.
More recently, there have been some more nuanced approaches that have tried to look at how nurture (including prenatal care) and good nutrition and improved health care combine with genetics to produce taller individuals. And there have also been decent recent studies that attempt to examine the connection between height, financial success, and even happiness. In other words, is there a “height premium”? (See NY Times article linked below.)
Some of the best research suggests that this premium can be found most commonly by looking at a boy’s size at age 16—studies speculate that taller teenagers accrue “human capital” and subsequent success through athletic and social activities.
Far be it for me to call any of this into question; but I can testify from painful personal experience that being very tall at 16 hardly allowed me to accrue anything other then nicknames such as Beanpole and Scarecrow. And with arms and legs that did not coordinate I was hardly in hot demand when it came time to choose up sides for street games—I was always next-to-last chosen, with only Stanley Futoran selected after me because he was prematurely headed toward 300 pounds.
Actually, as it turns out, The Pillow as we called him, wound up earning a lot more in a good year than I was ever able to make in a decade—but I will also not tell you either the numbers or what he did for a “living.”
But who am I to argue with the NY Times?
With the exception of my father, the only family member of his generation not to have been born in either Poland or Russia, no one was much taller than five-four (just one or two uncles) and most of my aunts on a good day could barely stretch themselves out to five-feet even.
And the next generation didn’t fare much better, with the exception of my brother and me. That in itself was significant—though there were more financially successful members of the family, my parents were twice privileged: they had two sons (some of their contemporaries had only daughters, no others had more than one son) and both of us reached six feet by the time we were 15 and kept growing—my brother to about six-three, me to about six-five.
The most affluent family members had either only daughters (as many as three) or had short offspring. In truth, I felt that I was more a freak of nature than blessed, while everyone else looked at my brother and me and felt, in our tallness, that we alone had fulfilled their hoped-for American Dream. Yes, those who made money fulfilled one important aspect of it, but Len and I were the only ones who could truly assimilate. And thus if and when the Nazis inevitably came looking for the Jews they would leave us alone because we would somehow pass for gentiles or for being “Real Americans,” especially if we had a little plastic surgery along the way—I will here not tell those stories!
So when the NY Times reported about studies linking tallness with success, I assumed that they had found us out and that life for Len and me suddenly would become much more dangerous. Particularly since there is a eugenics component to some of the research. And we know all too well where eugenics in the past has led!
The earliest attempt to equate tallness with success, actually intelligence, was a mid-nineteenth century interest in selective breeding that would produce taller and thus genetically superior individuals. Happily, try as they did, these early "scientists" could not prove the correlation--though this did not stop the Nazis from putting it into practice some years later.
More recently, there have been some more nuanced approaches that have tried to look at how nurture (including prenatal care) and good nutrition and improved health care combine with genetics to produce taller individuals. And there have also been decent recent studies that attempt to examine the connection between height, financial success, and even happiness. In other words, is there a “height premium”? (See NY Times article linked below.)
Some of the best research suggests that this premium can be found most commonly by looking at a boy’s size at age 16—studies speculate that taller teenagers accrue “human capital” and subsequent success through athletic and social activities.
Far be it for me to call any of this into question; but I can testify from painful personal experience that being very tall at 16 hardly allowed me to accrue anything other then nicknames such as Beanpole and Scarecrow. And with arms and legs that did not coordinate I was hardly in hot demand when it came time to choose up sides for street games—I was always next-to-last chosen, with only Stanley Futoran selected after me because he was prematurely headed toward 300 pounds.
Actually, as it turns out, The Pillow as we called him, wound up earning a lot more in a good year than I was ever able to make in a decade—but I will also not tell you either the numbers or what he did for a “living.”
But who am I to argue with the NY Times?
posted by Steven Zwerling at
3:00 PM
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