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Economics and Human Biology xxx (2014) xxx–xxx

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Economics and Human Biology

journal homepage: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/ehb

The height premium in Indonesia

Kitae Sohn *
Kookmin University, Economics, 77 Jeongneung-ro, Seongbuk-gu, Seoul 136-702, Republic of Korea

A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T

Article history: Analyzing the Indonesian Family Life Survey for the year 2007, this paper estimates that a
Received 29 July 2013 10 cm increase in physical stature is associated with an increase in earnings of 7.5% for
Received in revised form 31 December 2013 men and 13.0% for women, even after controlling for an extensive set of productivity
Accepted 31 December 2013 variables. When the height premium is estimated by sector, it is 12.3% for self-employed
Available online xxx men and 18.0% for self-employed women; a height premium of 11.1% is also estimated for
women in the private sector. In the public sector, however, the height premium estimate is
JEL classification: not statistically significant for either men or women. This paper provides further evidence
I15
of discrimination based on customers’ preferences for tall workers.
J24
ß 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
J31
J71
O15

Keywords:
Height
Wages
Height premium
Indonesia

1. Introduction environment. As explained in Section 3, given a person’s

The traditional Mincerian earnings equation estimates
the relationship between earnings and human capital such
as schooling, work experience, and tenure. Since its
introduction, the equation has been expanded to include
physical appearance, typically including variables for
beauty, weight, and height (see references in Hübler,
2009). Of the different physical appearance measures,
height stands out in the literature because it is easy to
measure, widely available, and (when measured rather
than self-reported as in our dataset) objective. More
important, although genetic factors largely determine the
variation in height among individuals within a population
at a point in time, there is enough room for the pre-
adulthood environment to influence height. Therefore,
height is also a reflection of an individual’s growth
* Tel.: +82 29105524; fax: +82 29104519.
E-mail address: ksohn@kookmin.ac.kr
genetic factors, an environment that has sufficient nutri-
tion and is free of diseases and extreme weather conditions
increases his or her height. At the same time, the
environment also affects human capital and labor market
outcomes. Hence, it is not surprising that, relative to short
people, tall people are healthier, stronger, smarter, more
educated, more sociable, more liked, and more confident.
As a result, they tend to be richer, more influential, more
likely to be married, more fertile, happier, and longer-lived
(see references in Mueller and Mazur, 2001; Carrieri and
De Paola, 2012).
The relationship between height and earnings is
generally positive, and its size is referred to as the height
premium. As discussed in the next section, the premium
has been estimated for some developed and developing
countries, but so far, not for Indonesia. Indonesia is of great
interest because it is the fourth most populous country in
the world, leading Southeast Asia and Islamic countries. It
is unfortunate that little light has been shed on such a large
population. In addition, little is known about the height

1570-677X/$ – see front matter ß 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ehb.2013.12.011

Please cite this article in press as: Sohn, K., The height premium in Indonesia. Econ. Hum. Biol. (2014), http://dx.doi.org/
10.1016/j.ehb.2013.12.011
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2 K. Sohn / Economics and Human Biology xxx (2014) xxx–xxx
premium in Islamic countries in general. Almond and
Mazumder (2011) demonstrated that prenatal exposure to
Ramadan resulted in lower birth weights. Given the
important implications of low birth weight for human
capital and labor market outcomes, the Indonesian case
can offer interesting insights into the height premium in
similar countries. More important, the Indonesian econ-
omy has grown rapidly since its independence, and
economic growth has not been impeded by the global
financial crisis: since 2007, its GDP growth rate has never
fallen below 6%, except in 2009, when it was 4.6%. It is also
notable that the Indonesian GDP is the largest of the ASEAN
members.1 Another interesting fact about Indonesia is that
it belongs to a region which exhibited the shortest statures
in the world for the entire period of 1810–1989 (Baten and
Blum, 2012). Hence, while the fast growing economy still
depends on physical strength at work and demands tall
(i.e., strong) workers, tallness is a scarce resource in
Indonesia. This situation provides for an interesting case
study on the height premium in Indonesia. Our results
show that, unconditional on covariates, an additional
10 cm in height is associated with a 35.8% increase in
earnings for men and a 44.4% increase for women.
Conditional on an extensive set of covariates, the
corresponding figures decrease to 7.5% and 13.0%, respec-
tively, but the magnitudes remain substantial. They are
greater than the return on additional year of schooling. In
addition, these figures are generally higher than those of
developed countries, indicating that greater value is
attached to height in Indonesia.
When the height premium is estimated for some
developing countries, reasons for the premium are rarely
discussed. However, recent studies have attempted to
explain the height premium in the US, the UK, and Sweden
based on workers’ productivity (Persico et al., 2004; Case
and Paxson, 2008; Lundborg et al., 2014); this paper
follows this line of research. Our data provide rich
information on individual and job characteristics, so it is
possible to estimate the extent to which productivity
explains the height premium in Indonesia. The results
suggest that although productivity factors contribute to
earnings to some extent (mostly owing to weight and
schooling), they are not the main channels through which
height increases earnings. When productivity factors fail to
entirely account for the height premium, discrimination is
usually considered. Employing the estimation strategies
provided by the literature on the beauty premium, we put
forth evidence that is suggestive of discrimination arising
from customers’ preferences for tallness.
2. Literature review
Research on height premiums using historical and
contemporary data has been growing quickly. Steckel
(1995) provided an excellent review of such research, and
1
ASEAN is the acronym for the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.
The association consists of the following 10 members: Brunei Darussa-
lam, Cambodia, Indonesia, Lao PDR, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines,
Singapore, Thailand, and Viet Nam.
Please cite this article in press as: Sohn, K., The height premium in Indonesia. Econ. Hum. Biol. (2014), http://dx.doi.org/
10.1016/j.ehb.2013.12.011
Steckel (2009) subsequently updated this review. Because
of the substantial extent of the literature, this section
attempts to cover countries from a range of incomes.
Attention is also paid to trends in empirical methods and
research questions.
Thomas and Strauss (1997) examined the relationship
between health and wages in urban Brazil. They measured
health based on height, BMI, per capita calories, and per
capita protein intakes, treating height as a predetermined
variable, but the other three health measures as endo-
genous. They found that a 1% increase in male height was
associated with a 2.4% increase in wages, controlling for
the natural log of BMI and education (Column 3 in their
Table 2). However, Schultz (2002) argued that height was
also endogenous due to individual heterogeneity and used
instrumental variables (IVs) for Ghana, Brazil, and the US.
Using similar ideas, Schultz (2003a) considered Ghana and
the Ivory Coast. Subsequently, Schultz (2003b) overviewed
this issue further. However, depending on the IVs used, the
height estimates were several times (possibly as much as
20 times) larger than the corresponding OLS estimates.
Because the differences are implausibly large, the exclu-
sion restrictions of his IVs are suspected to be violated.
As the next section explains, it is more plausible to
regard height as a proxy for childhood conditions and to
employ OLS or its variants. The study by Harper (2000) is
typical in this regard. Using a British cohort survey, he
considered height along with beauty and obesity and
found that men in the 80th–89th percentile range earned
5.9% more than those in the 20th–79th percentile range
(Column 3 in his Table 6). Other studies for Britain, using
similar specifications, were provided by Heineck (2008)
and Case et al. (2009). Drawing on US data, Rashad (2008)
estimated a height premium of 5.4% per 10 cm for both
white men and white women using OLS (in his Table 4).
Hersch (2008) also considered the US, but his study
differed from that of Rashad (2008) in that he based his
findings on immigrant workers. Nevertheless, Hersch
(2008) pooled men and women and used OLS to show
that an additional inch of height over the US gender-
specific average was associated with a 2% increase in
hourly wages (Column 2 of his Table 3). Böckerman et al.
(2010) also provided OLS estimates of the height premium,
but their sample concerned Finnish workers. Their
estimates suggested that an additional 10 cm in height
was associated with a 6.7% increase in earnings for men
and a 3.9% increase for women (Panel A of their Table 4).
The study by Hübler (2009) differed from others in that it
highlighted the nonlinearity of the height premium among
German workers. Here, the peak of the premium occurred
for men of moderately tall height and for women of
moderately small height. Furthermore, Vogl (2014) paid
attention to Mexico, which is not as developed as the US,
the UK, Finland, and Germany but is more developed than
Indonesia. Controlling for some covariates, he estimated a
height premium of 12% per 10 cm (Column 8 of his Table 4).
Instead of focusing on workers in developed countries,
Dinda et al. (2006) considered Indian coalminers and used
OLS to show that tall workers earned 6–13% more and that
short workers earned 3–4.5% less than workers of average
height (155–165 cm) (in their Table 4).
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Beyond simply estimating the height premium, some
studies have attempted to explain it. Using US and UK data
sets, Persico et al. (2004) regressed the natural log of wages
in adulthood on height in adolescence or adulthood,
looking for covariates that made the coefficient on height
statistically insignificant. Their main finding was that
height in adolescence (at age 16) was more strongly related
to earnings than that in adulthood and that social activities
in high school were the main driving force behind the
height premium. That is, tall adolescents participated more
in social activities, which could facilitate the accumulation
of productive human capital. This accumulated human
capital would eventually increase wages in adulthood. Also
using US and UK data, however, Case and Paxson (2008)
challenged that height at age 7 was as strongly related to
wages as that at age 16. More important, controlling for
cognitive skills in early childhood made the coefficient on
height statistically insignificant. Hence, according to Case
and Paxson (2008), the height premium was mainly driven
not by social activities in adolescence but by cognitive
skills that were formed in early childhood and were
not affected by future social activities in adolescence.
Lundborg et al. (2014) proposed that physical capacity
might be another source of the height premium in Sweden.
Their empirical strategy was similar to those of Persico
et al. (2004) and Case and Paxson (2008), and their main
conclusion was that physical capacity accounted for about
80% of the height premium. The remaining portion was
explained by cognitive and noncognitive skills. Although
the details differed, all three studies explained the height
premium entirely in terms of productivity.
To the best of our knowledge, there is no published
study on the height premium in Indonesia. In addition,
when developing countries have been considered, the
reasons for the premium have generally been neglected.
Below, we shed considerable light on Indonesia and
investigate possible reasons for the premium. We show
that there is a portion of the premium that workers’
productivity does not fully explain; evidence suggests that
this portion may be the result of discrimination.
3. Conceptual framework
The literature provides ample evidence that childhood
conditions such as nutrition, disease, and temperature
influence height, cognitive and noncognitive skills, and
physical capacity. Studies that have investigated the
reasons for the height premium have typically relied on
this evidence. In this section, we provide a simple set-up
under no uncertainty for our estimation strategies. This
framework is similar to those considered by Persico et al.
(2004), Case and Paxson (2008), Vogl (2014), and Lundborg
et al. (2014), but we introduce discrimination into the
framework.
Suppose height and other skills in childhood are
determined as follows:
HT ¼ HTðe; eHT Þ
vk ¼ vk ðe; ek Þ; k ¼ p; c; nc;
Please cite this article in press as: Sohn, K., The height premium in Indonesia. Econ. Hum. Biol. (2014), http://dx.doi.org/
10.1016/j.ehb.2013.12.011
3
where HT refers to height, vp to physical capacity
(particularly weight), vc to cognitive skills, vnc to non-
cognitive skills, and e to the childhood environment. In
addition, feHT ; e p ; ec ; enc g are mutually independent error
terms. Schooling is produced as follows:
S ¼ Sðe; vk ; eS Þ;
where eS is an error term. The production of schooling
slightly differs from that of HT and vk in that schooling is
produced by vk as well as e. This production function
emphasizes that height does not play a direct role in
producing schooling. Upon reaching adulthood, the worker
enters the labor market and earns a wage. His wage is
determined as follows:
w ¼ wðvk ; S; DðHTÞ; X; ew Þ;
where D(HT) refers to discrimination in favor of tallness, X
denotes a vector of factors related to wages, and ew is an
error term. Note that e does not directly enter the wage
production function; it affects wages only through vk and S.
Similarly, HT does not play a direct role in determining
wages but affects wages only through discrimination for
tallness. Finally, the worker and his parents choose {e,S} to
maximize the following utility function, subject to an
appropriate budget constraint.
UðC; wðvk ; S; DðHTÞ; X; ew ÞÞ;
where C refers to parental consumption.
HT and vk are produced by the same factor (e), so it is
possible that height is positively related to schooling and
wages even if height does not directly contribute to wages.
That is why researchers (e.g., Persico et al., 2004; Case and
Paxson, 2008; Cinnirella et al., 2011; Lundborg et al., 2014)
have tried to control for vk along with S to see whether HT
directly contributes to wages. Their findings suggest that w
is not a function of HT. In the next section, we estimate
w ¼ wðvk ; S; DðHTÞ; X; ew Þ in a linear setting. We control for
some measures of vk and S, and later, we take X into
account. It is shown that the height premium is
substantially explained by vp and S, but not by X. Despite
an extensive array of covariates, however, the coefficient
on height remains and is not negligible. As a result, we
attempt to explain this with D(HT).
4. Data and methods
This paper analyzes the Indonesian Family Life Survey
(IFLS), an on-going longitudinal survey.2 In 1993 (IFLS1),
the survey started following more than 22,200 individuals
in 7224 households in 13 of the 26 Indonesian provinces;
the sample is representative of 83% of the Indonesian
population. After that, four follow-ups were carried out in
1997 (IFLS2), 1998 (IFLS2+), 2000 (IFLS3), and 2007 (IFLS4).
Although the survey is longitudinal, this paper relies on the
most recent follow-up (i.e., IFLS4) because it contains
richer information on individual and job characteristics
2
The data are publically available at http://www.rand.org/labor/FLS/
IFLS.html.
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than the previous follow-ups. More important, because
height is stable in adulthood and begins to decline only
slightly in the late 40s (Cline et al., 1989; Huang et al., 2013
and references therein), employing data from a single
survey would not lose much information as far as height is
concerned. Persico et al. (2004) and Case and Paxson
(2008) successfully used longitudinal data to explain the
height premium. Hence, in some cases, tapping into the
longitudinal schemes of the IFLS may help one appreciate
the issue at hand. Unfortunately, the history of the IFLS is
not long enough to track respondents from early childhood
into late adulthood.
Earnings and height are two variables of interest.
Earnings in this paper refer to salaries or wages during the
past year (including the value of all benefits) for paid
employees and net profits (after taking out all business
expenses) during the past year for the self-employed. A
very small number of self-employed workers with zero or
negative net profits are excluded.3 It is possible to
construct hourly wages by combining the work hours
during a normal (or if not available, the past) week and
earnings during the past month. Because this construction
requires two variables, using hourly wages reduces the
sample size. The construction also assumes that workers
worked four weeks per month, which is not guaranteed in
a developing country, where job insecurity, seasonality,
and economic shocks abound. Related to these, hourly
earnings do not have information on unemployment,
whereas yearly earnings do by reflecting lower annual
earnings. For these reasons, this paper uses annual
earnings. Height and other anthropometrics in the IFLS
are of high quality because specially trained nurses visited
households even multiple times and measured anthropo-
metrics. Because heights were measured, rather than self-
reported, we can ignore measurement errors and biases.
This paper employs OLS as usually done in the
literature. The choice of the model is largely due to the
stability of height in adulthood. Height is stable in
adulthood and starts to diminish in the late 40s, but only
slightly, so employing panel models such as fixed effects
models is not feasible. For the same reason, addressing
individual heterogeneity is difficult in the literature of the
height premium. Of course, height shrinkage takes place at
older ages, but it is not large enough to guarantee
estimation precision. Moreover, even if estimation preci-
sion were guaranteed, the estimations would only come
from old people, who are not an ideal group to use for
estimating the height premium. Furthermore, using OLS
more readily permits a comparison between our results
and those of previous studies. Hence, the following
specification is used in this paper:
wi ¼ a0 þ a1 HT i þ X 1i a2 þ X 2i a3 þ ui ; (1)
where wi is the natural log of annual earnings, HT indicates
height, X1 is a vector of body weight4 and basic human
3
When ages are restricted to between 20 and 65 in the raw data, 6543
self-employed workers reported positive net profits, while 95 and 78
reported zero and negative net profits, respectively.
4
Sohn (2014) provided detailed analyses of weight included in IFLS4.
Please cite this article in press as: Sohn, K., The height premium in Indonesia. Econ. Hum. Biol. (2014), http://dx.doi.org/
10.1016/j.ehb.2013.12.011
capital variables, X2 is a vector of other individual and job
covariates, a. are coefficients to be estimated, and u is a
random error. a1 is the coefficient of interest. Basic human
capital variables consist of years of schooling, potential
work experience and its squared term, and tenure and its
squared term. X1 and X2 are listed individually because X1
is often used on its own. For all estimations, cross-section
person weights with attrition correction are applied to
make the estimations representative. There is some
disagreement in the literature on whether some variables
in X1 and X2 are controlled for. For example, schooling is
not predetermined. Hence when schooling and height are
positively correlated as explained in the previous section,
controlling for schooling reduces a1 (this is shown in the
next section). Our empirical strategy consists of two steps.
The first step is to account for height premium in terms of
productivity as much as possible, which helps one under-
stand the extent to which productivity contributes to
earnings. The second step is to isolate the unexplained part
and attempt to explain it. Therefore, we include produc-
tivity variables X1 and X2, whether they are predetermined
or not.
The variable for years of schooling is constructed using
two variables: the highest education level completed and
the highest grade completed at that school. Because grade
repetition is not a small issue in the developing world, this
combination of the two variables reduces measurement
errors. Actual work experience is not provided in the IFLS,
so potential work experience is approximated by age
minus years of schooling minus 6 (age at the beginning of
schooling), as conventionally done in the literature. This
approximation is reasonable for men but may not be for
women because of frequent interruptions in their work
experience resulting from marriage, child-bearing, and
child-rearing. This concern can be partially alleviated by
introducing tenure. Tenure is obtained by a direct answer
to ‘‘how long have you worked on this job?’’ in years and
months. The number of months is divided by 12, so the unit
of tenure is in years. As explained in more detail later, work
experience and its squared term are not statistically
significant conditional on tenure and its squared term, but
significant unconditional on tenure and its squared term.
This suggests that work experience contains measurement
errors and that tenure can be substituted for work
experience to some extent.5 In this case, either work
experience or tenure, but not both, can be entered into
specification (1). However, both are considered together
because specification (1) is an extension of the Mincerian
specification and there is no theoretical reason to select
one over the other. Considering the growth period, school
leaving ages, and working ages, observations are restricted
5
The correlation coefficient between work experience and tenure is
0.57 for men and 0.49 for women, and the coefficients are similar whether
workers are self- or paid-employed. Despite women having a lower
correlation coefficient than men, the coefficients for work and its squared
term lose statistical significance only for women when tenure and its
squared term are entered into specification (1). Hence, the loss of
statistical significance for women probably results from measurement
errors in work experience rather than from multicollinearity between
work experience and tenure.
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17
Natural Log of Yearly Earnings
16
15
14
130
Fig. 1. Height and the natural log of earnings: linear fit. Notes: Height is categorized in 5 cm intervals, and circles represent height-earnings cells. In addition,
the diameter of each circle is proportional to the cell size. The added lines are fitted regression lines weighted by cell sizes. Earnings are measured in
Indonesian rupiah.
to workers aged 20–65 with valid information. The
restrictions on age (for both genders) and employment
status (for women) mainly reduce the sample size. In
addition, the age distribution of the sample by gender is
provided in the appendix (Fig. A.1). Lastly, variables in X2
are explained as they are introduced in the next section.
5. Results
5.1. Descriptive statistics
Descriptive statistics are provided in Table A.1 in the
appendix. Because many variables are used in this paper,
only some variables of interest are briefly explained in this
subsection. The male and female mean heights are
162.4 cm and 151.2 cm, respectively. Their small statures
are consistent with the low level of economic develop-
ment. The small statures are also consistent with the
historical trend that South and Southeast Asians were the
shortest in the world for the period 1810–1989 (Baten and
Blum, 2012). The mean years of schooling for both men and
women are slightly less than 9 years as typically found in
the developing world (Psacharopoulos and Patrinos, 2004);
thus, most workers were engaged in physical work that
required a low level of skills. This can be checked by
examining self-reported job characteristics. In total, 62.3%
of male workers and 41.7% of female workers were
engaged in jobs that required lots of physical effort at
least most of the time. A high proportion of workers also
did jobs that required lifting heavy loads, stooping,
kneeling, and crouching. By contrast, only about 10% of
workers worked with computers at least most of the time.
Hence, tallness is a scarce resource in Indonesia, but most
jobs require physical strength to which height largely
contributes. These statistics imply that height is highly
Please cite this article in press as: Sohn, K., The height premium in Indonesia. Econ. Hum. Biol. (2014), http://dx.doi.org/
10.1016/j.ehb.2013.12.011
5
Men Women
150 170 190 130 150 170 190
Height (cm)
valued in Indonesia; this value is estimated more system-
atically in the next subsection.
5.2. Main results
Fig. 1 provides an intuitive understanding of the
relationship between height and earnings. Height is
categorized in 5 cm intervals, and circles represent
height-earnings cells. In addition, the diameter of each
circle is proportional to the cell size; the added lines are
fitted regression lines weighted by cell sizes. Because men
are on average taller than women, the circles and fitted line
for men lie more to the right than those for women. In
addition, men earn more than women on average, so the
circles and fitted line for men lie higher than those for
women. Two points stand out regarding the relationship
between the two variables. First, the relationship between
height and earnings is linear for both genders. Second, the
slope of the line for women is steeper than that for men. As
shown below, these two points are robust to controlling for
covariates. Hence, there are also height premiums in
earnings in Indonesia. In Fig. 2, we relax the parametric
assumption for the linear fit, using locally weight
regressions, and examine the relationship between height
and the level (instead of natural log) of earnings.6 Although
the difference in the slopes between men and women is
not as discernible as that in Fig. 1, the relationship for both
genders is generally linear, especially in the densely
populated areas.
6
Observations in the top 1 percentile of earnings for each gender are
excluded. Otherwise, the y-axis would be inordinately long, and the fitted
line would be less discernible.
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6 K. Sohn / Economics and Human Biology xxx (2014) xxx–xxx
80 60
Earnings (Million Rp.)
4020
0
130
Fig. 2. Height and the level of earnings: locally weighted regression. Notes: Earnings are measured in 1 million Indonesian rupiah.
At this point, it is unclear whether height has a positive
effect on earnings independent of other covariates or
whether it simply captures the effects of covariates on
earnings. In the latter case, the relationship exhibited
in the figure is spurious. To address this issue, specification
(1) is estimated, and the results are listed in Table 1 for
men and in Table 2 for women. For these two tables,
standard errors are omitted to shorten the length of the
tables but are available upon request. For men in Table 1,
when no covariates are controlled for as in Column 1, a one
SD (6.1 cm) increase in height is related to a 21.8% increase
in earnings. Because tall men are also heavy, however,
the great size of the relationship between height and
earnings may contain the contribution of body weight to
earnings. This idea is plausible because physical strength is
still important in the Indonesian labor market. Hence,
weight is added to the specification as shown in Column 2,
and as a consequence, the size of a1 becomes a third of its
unconditional value. The coefficient on weight is statisti-
cally significant, and the size of the relationship is
considerable: a one SD increase in weight (10.4 kg) is
related to a 33.6% increase in earnings. Of course, the size
does not indicate a causal influence of weight on earnings.
The large size probably includes the positive effects that
earnings exert on weight gain.
Height is not only related to weight but also to human
capital. The basic human capital variables are first
included. Column 3 shows that all human capital variables
exhibit the expected signs and that their sizes are
plausible. Years of schooling have a linear relationship
with earnings, and an additional year of schooling is
associated with 10.7% more earnings. This size is the same
as that estimated by Sohn (2013), using the same data.
Further, work experience and tenure have concave
relationships with earnings, and an additional year of
work experience and tenure is associated with 1.7% and
Please cite this article in press as: Sohn, K., The height premium in Indonesia. Econ. Hum. Biol. (2014), http://dx.doi.org/
10.1016/j.ehb.2013.12.011
Men Women
150 170 190 130 150 170 190
Height (cm)
8.8% more earnings, respectively. Moreover, this causes a1
to further diminish by 19.2%. The importance of schooling
in explaining the height premium was highlighted by Case
et al. (2009) and Vogl (2014). Two interpretations are
possible in explaining the large role of education in
determining earnings, as illustrated in the conceptual
framework. Specifically, one is that common factors (e.g.,
parental investments in health) influence both height and
schooling; another is that the early life conditions
influence height and cognitive skills, and cognitive skills,
in turn, increase schooling. Either way, the results show
the importance of cognitive skills or human capital in
accounting for the height premium. Nevertheless, it is
worth pointing out that the height premium is still large: a
one SD increase in height is associated with 5.3% more
earnings or 8.8% more earnings per 10 cm.
Although ethnic groups do not differ in genetic
makeups for height, they may differ in childhood
environments, which in turn influence both height and
earnings. Similarly, married and unmarried men are the
genetically same for height on average, but for evolu-
tionary reasons, women are attracted to tall and rich men.
Hence, marital status may be positively correlated with
both height and earnings. For the reasons, dummy
variables for Javanese ethnicity and for being married
are added to the specification. Column 4 shows that
Javanese men earn 19.2% (¼ 100ðe0:213  1) less than do
non-Javanese men and that married men earn 47.1% more
than do unmarried men. It is also notable that experience
and its squared term are no longer statistically significant.
This result is due to marital status (results not shown), that
is, married men have longer work experience and more
earnings. However, the statistically insignificant coeffi-
cients on work experience and its squared term do not
mean that work experience is unrelated to earnings,
independent of marital status. When tenure and its
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Table 1
The height premium for men. Dependent variable: natural log of earnings during the last year.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

Height (cm) (/10) 0.358 0.109 0.088 0.082 0.082 0.079 0.065 0.075
Weight (kg) 0.032 0.018 0.018 0.018 0.017 0.016 0.009
Years of schooling 0.107 0.106 0.104 0.098 0.099 0.058
Experience 0.017 0.001 <0.000 0.002 0.002 0.011
Experience2 (/100) 0.026 0.004 0.003 0.004 0.001 0.009
Tenure 0.090 0.090 0.089 0.089 0.088 0.055
Tenure2 (/100) 0.209 0.207 0.205 0.205 0.204 0.124
Javanese 0.213 0.228 0.230 0.219 0.142
Married 0.386 0.384 0.380 0.373 0.298
Arisans 0.134 0.135 0.139 0.051
Words recalled 0.025 0.025 0.019
Grip strength (gr) 7.12 5.43

Job characteristics (F stat, p-value) No No No No No No No Yes (43.71)

N 8432 8328 5888 5888 5888 5888 5870 5842
R2 0.031 0.086 0.239 0.255 0.256 0.260 0.262 0.421

Notes: Cross-section person weights with attrition correction are applied for all estimations. Standard errors are available upon request. Italics:
p-value < 0.05; bold: p-value < 0.01.

Table 2
The height premium for women. Dependent variable: natural log of earnings during the last year.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

Height (cm) (/10) 0.444 0.315 0.153 0.150 0.152 0.157 0.146 0.130
Weight (kg) 0.018 0.009 0.009 0.009 0.008 0.007 0.005
Years of schooling 0.118 0.118 0.115 0.107 0.108 0.071
Experience 0.012 0.010 0.011 0.009 0.009 0.009
Experience2 (/100) 0.017 0.013 0.015 0.014 0.017 0.006
Tenure 0.127 0.128 0.127 0.127 0.128 0.065
Tenure2 (/100) 0.300 0.301 0.299 0.298 0.300 0.140
Javanese 0.112 0.127 0.120 0.107 0.142
Married 0.056 0.068 0.066 0.074 0.003
Arisans 0.102 0.095 0.105 0.042
Words recalled 0.027 0.025 0.018
Grip strength (gr) 8.92 5.14
Job characteristics (F stat) No No No No No No No Yes (48.93)
N 4811 4789 3493 3493 3493 3493 3476 3464
R2 0.031 0.048 0.276 0.278 0.279 0.282 0.286 0.498

Notes: Cross-section person weights with attrition correction are applied for all estimations. Standard errors are available upon request. Italics:
p-value < 0.05; bold: p-value < 0.01.

squared term are omitted, the coefficients on work
experience and its squared term become statistically
significant again (results not shown). The changes in
statistical significance only indicate that measurement
errors inherent in potential work experience reduce the
estimation precision and that relatively accurately mea-
sured tenure can be substituted for work experience. More
important for this paper, a1 diminishes, but the reduction
is very small.
Because Rashad (2008) and Böckerman et al. (2010)
used covariates and empirical models similar to ours for
developed countries, it is worth comparing their findings
to ours to appreciate the degree to which height is valued
in both regions. The estimate by Rashad (2008) was 5.4%
per 10 cm for white men, while the corresponding figure
provided by Böckerman et al. (2010) was 6.7% for men.
Column 4 shows that a 10 cm increase in height is related
to 8.2% more earnings. These comparisons show that
height is more valued in Indonesia, which is consistent
with the development stage of its economy, where
physical strength is heavily demanded.7 This contrast is
extended to women in a larger magnitude, as is shown
below. The estimate by Rashad (2008) was 5.4% per 10 cm
for white women, and that by Böckerman et al. (2010) was
3.9%; our estimate is as high as 15.0%.
In addition to the basic human capital variables and
demographics, Persico et al. (2004) particularly high-
lighted the importance of social activities in high school in
explaining the height premium. The IFLS does not provide
information on social activities in adolescence, but it does
contain information on participation in arisans. An arisan
is a form of rotating savings and credit association (ROSCA)
in Indonesia. Just as other ROSCAs, arisans are formed
among individuals whose circumstances and character-
istics are well known to each other. Thus, the operation of
7
Another interpretation is that a higher variance of the non-genetic
determinants of height in Indonesia might overestimate the height
premium (see Vogl, 2014: 90).

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10.1016/j.ehb.2013.12.011
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8 K. Sohn / Economics and Human Biology xxx (2014) xxx–xxx
arisans relies on the social connectedness of those among
whom they operate; defaults are socially sanctioned, and
defaulters cannot join the same arisans in the future and
possibly any other arisans in the communities. Therefore,
participation in arisans reflects the social adaptability of
people. Furthermore, participation in arisans requires
honesty (for non-cheating), punctuality (for contributions
to the ‘‘pot’’), and patience (for their turn), so the
participation status also reflects non-cognitive skills. To
the extent that participation in arisans in adulthood is
correlated with social activities in adolescence, the status
of participation in arisans can capture what Persico et al.
(2004) attempted. Hence, a dummy variable for participa-
tion in arisans is added to the specification as shown in
Column 5. The coefficient indicates that arisan participants
earn 14.3% more than non-participants do.8 Although the
variable has information on earnings, it is little related to
height. Thus, a1 remains the same.
Next, Case and Paxson (2008) argued that cognitive skills
(largely formed in childhood), rather than social activities in
adolescence, accounted for the height premium. For most of
the sample, the IFLS does not provide information on
cognitive skills in childhood, but it contains information on
cognitive capacity. Specifically, interviewers read 10 words
slowly to respondents and then asked the respondents to
repeat back the list, once immediately after the list was read
and a second time some minutes later. The sum of the
correctly recalled words in the two sessions is used to
measure cognitive capacity. Because few respondents
correctly recalled all 10 words in each session, right
censoring is not an issue. This measure is borrowed from
the Health and Retirement Study (HRS), so it has some
validity in that the same variable in the HRS has produced
plausible results (e.g., Case and Paxson, 2010). In addition,
this measure reflects early life cognitive development,
schooling, and cognitive reinforcement learning in adult-
hood, leading to an upward bias in the coefficient on
cognitive capacity. On the other hand, this measure is rather
crude, so it contains measurement errors, leading to a
downward bias in the coefficient on cognitive capacity.
Hence, a priori, the degree of bias is uncertain, but it is likely
to have substance related to cognitive skills. Recall that
schooling is already controlled for, so an additional
reduction in a1 due to cognitive capacity is likely to be
small. Indeed, when the variable is entered as in Column 6,
a1 remains almost the same. This result does not mean that
cognitive capacity has little explanatory power for earnings.
In fact, a one SD increase in the number of words recalled
(3.5 words) is associated with an 8.7% increase in earnings.
This magnitude is large given that the basic human capital
variables are already controlled for.
In addition to cognitive and noncognitive skills,
Lundborg et al. (2014) emphasized the importance of
physical capacity. They argued that accounting for physical
8
This size is likely to be biased because participation in arisans is
endogenous. However, the role of this variable is not to estimate the
causal effect of participation in arisans on earnings, but to capture its
mediating effect. Hence, attention should be paid to the finding that
controlling for this variable influences a1 little.
Please cite this article in press as: Sohn, K., The height premium in Indonesia. Econ. Hum. Biol. (2014), http://dx.doi.org/
10.1016/j.ehb.2013.12.011
capacity reduced the height premium by about 80%. Their
measures of physical capacity consisted of muscular
strength and physical work capacity. Muscular strength
was measured by grip strength, and physical capacity by
the maximum resistance attained in watts when riding a
stationary bike for a specific period. The IFLS contains the
former but not the latter. Trained nurses measured
respondents’ grip strength for both hands three times in
a row. In this paper, the average strength of the dominant
hand is referred to as grip strength. For a very small
number of respondents who failed to report the dominant
hand, the right hand is assumed to be dominant. Column 7
shows that grip strength is positively related to earnings: a
one SD increase in grip strength (9.2 kg) is related to 6.6%
more earnings. More important, the introduction of grip
strength reduces a1, but only slightly.
Thus far, only individual characteristics have been
considered, but job characteristics may influence selection
in both height and earnings. For example, some high-paying
jobs are better suited for tall workers. In the final column
(Column 8), a set of job characteristics is added in addition to
job attachment. A dichotomous dummy variable is created
for job attachment, taking a value of one if workers worked
26 or more weeks in the past year and zero otherwise. Job
characteristics consist of the natural log of work hours, firm
size, union (or business association for the self-employed)
status, 10 industry dummies, urban residence, and 8 self-
reported job characteristics. Because some of the self-
reported job requirements are subsequently used again,
some explanations are in order. These self-reported job
requirements consist of the following job requirements: lots
of physical effort; lifting heavy loads; stooping, kneeling,
and crouching; good eyesight; intense concentration/
attention; working with computers; and involving a lot of
stress. For each job requirement, respondents provided the
frequency of the requirement, choosing one of the following
four options: all/almost all the time, most of the time, some
of the time, and none/almost none of the time. For this paper,
the first two options and the last two options are combined
to create a dummy variable. This additional set of covariates
(i.e., X2) is jointly statistically significant, and R squared
jumps to 0.42, which is large in the literature on human
capital. Hence, X2 has explanatory power for earnings.
Moreover, a1 increases and recovers the reduction caused
by the covariates beyond the basic human capital variables.
Thus, a1 in Column 8 (0.0075) is close to that estimated with
only the basic human capital variables (0.0088 in Column 3).
Although the method of selection on observables is not ideal
for estimating the causal effects of the variables, the similar
sizes, despite a large set of covariates, suggest that a height
premium of 8% approximates the true value.
Table 2 presents the results for women. The estimation
specification is the same as that for men, and the patterns
of results for the relationship between height and earnings
are also the same. The main difference between men and
women is the size of a1, although a1 for women in every
column is not statistically significantly different from that
for men. When only height is placed on the right-hand side
of specification (1), the coefficient is estimated to be
0.0444 (vs. 0.0358 for men). When weight is added, a1
diminishes, but not as much as that for men. In addition,
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K. Sohn / Economics and Human Biology xxx (2014) xxx–xxx
when the rest of the columns are examined, it is clear that
controlling for the basic human capital variables in Column
3 is sufficient for estimating the height premium
potentially close to the true one. In Column 3, a1 is
0.0153, so a one SD increase in height (5.6 cm) is associated
with 8.5% more earnings (vs. 5.3% for men). When province
fixed effects added to X1 and X2 to account for possible
differences between local labor markets (not shown), a1
becomes nearly the same as that estimated with only
X1—a1 is 0.0087 for men and 0.0155 for women. This
strengthens our argument that controlling for X1 is
sufficient to estimate the height premium.
In the literature, there is little consistency in the gender
difference in height premium even for a single country. For
example, when Case and Paxson (2008) regressed hourly
wages on height, the coefficient on height was greater for
men than for women in the British Cohort Study, but
smaller in the National Child Development Study. In the
same specification with the British Household Panel
Survey, Heineck (2008) reported that the coefficient on
height was smaller for men than for women. The greater
size of a1 for women than for men in our estimations may
result from sample selection among women; that is, high
ability women are more likely to be tall, to participate in
the labor market, and to earn more than low ability
women.9 If this is the case, the male coefficient on height is
likely to be close to the true height premium in Indonesia.
There are minor differences in the results between men
and women. For example, the returns to schooling are
higher for women than for men across the columns; Pitt
et al. (2012) explained this well-known fact, using a simple
model of human capital investment and activity choice. In
addition, experience and its squared term are already
statistically insignificant even when only the basic human
capital variables are controlled for (see Column 3). A
probable reason is that potential work experience contains
large measurement errors owing to frequent interruptions
in women’s career paths. At the same time, tenure and its
squared term—which are possibly less plagued by mea-
surement errors—are statistically significant regardless of
additional covariates. Marital status is not statistically
significant possibly because men are still the dominant
gender in Indonesian society and the so-called marital
premium exists only for men. Nevertheless, the overall
results suggest that height plays an important role for
women in accounting for earnings, despite controlling for a
large set of covariates.
Hübler (2009) argued that in Germany between 1985
and 2004, height exhibited a nonlinear relationship with
wages. In particular, the relationship was inverse U-shaped
for both men and women, but the shape was more concave
for men. To check for nonlinearity for our case, a
polynomial of height is estimated along with X1. Column
1 of Panels A (for men) and B (for women) of Table 3 lists a
linear term of height for comparison purposes, meaning
9
Because this paper considers the height premium given labor force
participation, the height premium for women is not rigorously estimated.
For comparison purposes, the empirical specification is intended to be the
same for both men and women.
Please cite this article in press as: Sohn, K., The height premium in Indonesia. Econ. Hum. Biol. (2014), http://dx.doi.org/
10.1016/j.ehb.2013.12.011
9
that it is a replication of a1 in Column 3 of Tables 1 and 2. In
Column 2, a polynomial of degree 2 of height is considered.
Both terms are statistically significant for men (Panel A),
and the peak is 169 cm, approximately representing the 85
percentile. Hence, this finding is consistent with that of
Hübler. For women (Column 2 of Panel B), however, both
terms of height do not even reach conventional levels of
significance. This finding is inconsistent with that of
Hübler because his findings indicate that both terms of
height are statistically significant even for women. This
inconsistency leads us to experiment with a polynomial of
height degree 3 as shown in Column 3. For both genders, no
coefficient on any term is statistically significant, which
casts doubt on the nonlinearity argument in Indonesia. In
contrast, Hübler found that all terms were statistically
significant for men, and the linear and squared terms for
women. It could be that the parametric assumption is too
strong, so a series of dummy variables, instead of the
polynomial of height, is entered into the specification
(Column 4). For men, a slight nonlinearity is observed, but
not in the way that Column 2 suggests. For women, the
relationship between height and earnings exhibit a linear
relationship to a large extent. In fact, Figs. 1 and 2
anticipate this linear relationship. Hence, although the
relationship between height and wages were nonlinear in
Germany, the relationship is linear in Indonesia for both
men and women. Because of this linearity, we continue to
use a linear term of height in subsequent regressions.
It is worth highlighting that productivity alone does not
fully explain the height premium because the covariates
beyond X1 fail to entirely account for it. This finding does not
agree with those of Persico et al. (2004), Case and Paxson
(2008), and Lundborg et al. (2014). A possible reason is that
the three studies considered developed countries, whereas
this paper considers a developing country. It could be that
earnings are mainly determined by productivity in devel-
oped countries possibly via much competition, whereas
other factors play an influential role in determining earnings
in developing countries. In the literature on the relationship
between physical appearance and earnings, discrimination
is usually investigated when productivity fails to completely
explain the relationship. This is the line which this paper
follows in the next subsection.
5.3. Reasons for the height premium
Estimating the height premium in Indonesia contributes
to the literature because the size of the premium has not
been properly assessed for the country. Another contribu-
tion to the literature is to understand why the premium
exists at all. It might be because height contributes to
productivity. Because the individual characteristics beyond
X1 alter the coefficient on height little, however, productiv-
ity differences may not be important in accounting for the
premium. Alternatively, some productivity variables espe-
cially important in the Indonesian labor market may be
omitted. However, the patterns of changes in a1 in Tables 1
and 2 suggest that some omitted variables of productivity
are not likely to play a major role. Moreover, to have a
substantial impact on a1, such omitted variables would need
to have a low correlation with X1 and X2. Given the large
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Table 3
Testing for the nonlinearity of the height premium. Dependent variable: natural log of earnings during the last year.

1 2 3 4

Panel A: Men
Height (cm) (/10) 0.088 1.994 10.96
(0.031)*** (0.936)** (17.95)
2
Height (/100) 0.059 0.611
(0.029)** (1.095)
Height3 (/10,000) 0.113
(0.223)
155–160 cm 0.124
(0.063)**
160–165 cm 0.178
(0.060)***
165–170 cm 0.146
(0.065)**
170 cm and over 0.236
(0.077)***
Weight and basic human capital variables Yes Yes Yes Yes
N 5888 5888 5888 5888
R2 0.239 0.240 0.240 0.240

Panel B: Women
Height (cm) (/10) 0.153 1.785 6.344
(0.048)*** (1.746) (41.28)
2
Height (/100) 0.054 0.484
(0.058) (2.747)
Height3 (/10,000) 0.118
(0.609)
145–150 cm 0.142
(0.083)
150–155 cm 0.207
(0.084)**
155–160 cm 0.236
(0.092)**
160 cm and over 0.396
(0.127)***
Weight and basic human capital variables Yes Yes Yes Yes
N 3493 3493 3493 3493
R2 0.276 0.276 0.276 0.276

Notes: Basic human capital variables include years of education, potential work experience and its squared term, and tenure and its squared term. Cross-
section person weights with attrition correction are applied for all estimations. Standard errors are in parentheses.
** p-Value < 0.05.
*** p-Value < 0.01.

number of elements of X1 and X2, the issue of omitted
variables does not seem critical. Sorting could be another
reason (Vogl, 2014). Specifically, tall workers self-select into
jobs that generate high returns to height or its correlates
such as physical capacity and human capital. However,
controlling for the industry dummies, job characteristics,
and province fixed effects changes the height premium little,
so sorting does not seem to play an important role in
explaining the height premium. According to Becker (1971),
discrimination—which is unexplained by productivity—
arises from a low level of competition in the market. It
could be that the low level of economic development in
Indonesia does not generate enough competition to
eliminate discrimination. Then, the height premium esti-
mated in the previous subsection may result from
discrimination. In the following, we provide evidence of
discrimination. However, because of the issues of omitted
variables and imperfect proxies for productivity, one should
be aware that the evidence is suggestive.
Another caveat is in order. It is not always easy to
distinguish between discrimination and productivity.
Discrimination can influence productivity variables, parti-
cularly when employees physically interact with customers.
For example, suppose that self-confidence is an important
productivity variable in a business. If customers have more
faith in tall salesmen than short ones, then short salesmen
lose self-confidence and their earnings decrease. When
attention is paid only to self-confidence, the lower earnings
of short salesmen result from their lower self-confidence.
However, when attention is paid to the cause of their lower
self-confidence, their lower earnings result from discrimi-
nation. Imperfect as it may be, controlling for the job
requirements in IFLS4—particularly, interaction with peo-
ple—can partially address this issue. In addition, there is
little change in the height premium after controlling for X1,
suggesting that the issue may not be critical. Nevertheless,
the ambiguous nature of the distinction between discrimi-
nation and productivity should be kept in mind.
In the context of the beauty premium among lawyers,
Biddle and Hamermesh (1998) tested employer discrimi-
nation by comparing self-employed lawyers and paid-
employed lawyers. Employers can discriminate in favor of
tall workers for two reasons: first, employers them-
selves prefer tall workers beyond workers’ productivity
(employers’ tastes); second, customers prefer tall workers
beyond worker’s productivity and observing this (custo-
mers’ tastes), employers discriminate in favor of tall
workers. In this paper, the first type of discrimination is

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10.1016/j.ehb.2013.12.011
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Table 4
The height premium by sector. Dependent variable: natural log of earnings during the last year.

1 2 3 4 5

Self-employed Public sector Private sector

Panel A: Men
Height (cm) (/10) 0.151 0.123 0.039 0.039 0.001
(0.052)*** (0.048)*** (0.068) (0.040) (0.033)
Weight and basic human capital Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
All the other covariates No Yes No No Yes
N 2313 2294 504 2311 2298
R2 0.147 0.316 0.229 0.287 0.495

Panel B: Women
Height (cm) (/10) 0.152 0.180 0.065 0.175 0.111
(0.074)** (0.069)** (0.116) (0.065)*** (0.054)**
Weight and basic human capital Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
All the other covariates No Yes No No Yes
N 1447 1428 367 1284 1276
R2 0.134 0.349 0.356 0.300 0.527

Notes: Basic human capital variables include years of education, potential work experience and its squared term, and tenure and its squared term. Cross-
section person weights with attrition correction are applied for all estimations. Standard errors are in parentheses.
** p-Value < 0.05.
*** p-Value < 0.01.

referred to as employer discrimination and the second type
as customer discrimination. According to Biddle and
Hamermesh (1998), if employer discrimination exists, the
beauty premium should be lower for self-employed lawyers
because there is ipso facto no employer to discriminate
against them. Hübler (2009) considered this hypothesis but
did not test it because the sample size of the self-employed
in his data was too small. Fortunately, the proportion of the
self-employed in Indonesia is high as is usually the case in
developing countries, so it is possible to test this hypothesis.
Biddle and Hamermesh (1998) also tested consumer
discrimination. They hypothesized that if the beauty
premium was due to consumers’ preferences for beauty,
the premium would exist for lawyers in the private sector
because of profit motives whereas it would not exist for
those in the public sector. Hübler (2009) tested this
hypothesis and found that the height premium existed
only for men in the private sector. Unfortunately, the
proportion of employees in the public sector in our sample is
not large, so the estimation precision for this sector is
inevitably low. Nevertheless, workers are divided into three
sectors (self-employment, the public sector, and the private
sector) and the two hypotheses are tested. It is worth noting
that the activities of the self-employed are not more
physically demanding than those of paid employees in
the private sector. For example, 65.7% of self-employed men
had jobs that required lots of physical effort at least most of
the time; the figure for paid employees in the private sector
is 60.8%. Similarly, the corresponding figures for female
workers are 42.3% and 43.5%.
Panels A and B of Table 4 have the results for men and
women, respectively. For the self-employed (Column 1),
with X1 being controlled for, there exists a statistically
significant height premium. For men, the premium is almost
twice as large as that for all male workers (0.0088 in Column
3 in Table 1), while for women, the premium is nearly the
same as that for all female workers (0.0153 in Column 3 in
Table 2). As before, further controlling for X2 changes a1
little, as can be seen in Column 2. On the other hand, the
height premium does not appear to exist for either male or
female workers in the public sector (Column 3). Because the
sample sizes are small, it is unclear whether the premium
does not exist or it exists but it is imprecisely estimated.
Even if it existed, however, a1 for this sector is substantially
smaller than that of self-employment. When the private
sector is considered as in Column 4, the height premium
does not appear to exist for men, but it is precisely estimated
for women. Also note that the size is large. Further
controlling for X2 diminishes a1 to some extent (Column
5), but it is still statistically and economically significant.
Because the height premium exists in self-employment
but there is no employer to discriminate in this sector, the
premium in this sector is likely due to customers’
preferences for tall men and women. Although it is not
definitive, the argument for customer discrimination is
reinforced when the results for the public and private
sectors are considered. Because profit motives play a
small role in the public sector, discrimination driven by
customers’ preferences for tall workers is likely to be absent,
which is consistent with the small and statistically
insignificant a1 for both men and women. On the other
hand, profits loom large in the private sector, so employers
can discriminate against short workers if customers like to
interact with tall workers. Although the height premium
does not appear to exist for men, it does appear to exit for
women. It is of interest that Böckerman and Vainiomäki
(2013) found the same patterns for Finland (where jobs
in the private sector dominated), when they removed
unobserved cognitive and noncognitive skills. They also
suspected that discrimination against short women existed.
It can be objected that the height premiums in self-
employment do not result from discrimination based
on customer preferences but rather from the sector
characteristics. That is, height plays different roles in
different sectors. However, a large number of elements of
X1 and X2 make this argument less convincing. Similarly,
the implication of the non-existence of the height
premium in the public sector may have nothing to do
with customers but simply indicates that the sector is not
allowed to discriminate. However, this argument is not

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10.1016/j.ehb.2013.12.011
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12 K. Sohn / Economics and Human Biology xxx (2014) xxx–xxx

Table 5
Testing for the height premium via productivity. Dependent variable: natural log of earnings during the last year.

Physical effort Heavy loads Stoop/kneel/crouch

Panel A: Men
Height (cm) (/10) 0.088 0.110 0.087 0.102 0.092 0.109
(0.031)*** (0.048)** (0.031)*** (0.038)*** (0.031)*** (0.042)***
Job char. 0.061 0.498 0.065 0.532 0.157 0.338
(0.035) (0.924) (0.035) (0.910) (0.034)*** (0.889)
Height  job char. 0.003 0.004 0.003
(0.006) (0.006) (0.005)
Weight and basic human capital Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
N 5888 5888 5888 5888 5888 5888
R2 0.240 0.240 0.240 0.240 0.243 0.243

Panel B: Women
Height (cm) (/10) 0.155 0.174 0.156 0.192 0.150 0.205
(0.048)*** (0.058)*** (0.048)*** (0.053)*** (0.048)*** (0.058)***
Job char. 0.091 0.710 0.080 2.979 0.132 1.707
(0.049) (1.347) (0.062) (1.607) (0.050)*** (1.334)
Height  job char. 0.004 0.019 0.012
(0.009) (0.011) (0.009)
Weight and basic human capital Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
N 3493 3493 3493 3493 3493 3493
R2 0.277 0.277 0.276 0.277 0.278 0.278

Notes: Basic human capital variables include years of education, potential work experience and its squared term, and tenure and its squared term. Cross-
section person weights with attrition correction are applied for all estimations. Standard errors are in parentheses.
** p-Value < 0.05.
*** p-Value < 0.01.

convincing in the Indonesian setting, where bribery and
cronyism in hiring were deeply entrenched under Soe-
harto’s long dictatorship and remains to this day despite
the recent reforms (Kuncoro, 2004; McLeod, 2005).
Therefore, there is much room for discrimination.
Nevertheless, to address these concerns, we provide
another piece of evidence of customer discrimination in
favor of tall workers, applying the estimation strategies
proposed by Hamermesh and Biddle (1994). Specifically,
their specification can be slightly modified for our case as
follows:
wi ¼ b0 þ b1 HT i þ b2 Reqi þ b3 HT i  Reqi þ X 1i b4 þ ei
where w, HT, and X1 are defined as for specification (1), Req
refers to a job requirement, b. are coefficients to be
estimated, and e is a random error. X2 is omitted, but three
job requirements directly related to height in X2 are
interacted with HT, one at a time. The three job requirements
concern lots of physical effort, lifting heavy loads, and
stooping/kneeling/crouching. The first two requirements
favor tall workers, whereas the last one disadvantages tall
workers. Of course, some tall workers are frail, while some
short workers are strong. However, height and physical
strength are positively correlated. This is true in human
evolution, which has contributed to women’s preferences
for tall men. In fact, when grip strength is regressed on
height, age, and age squared by gender, the coefficient on
height is statistically significant and positive; the positive
association remains the same even after controlling for
weight.10 Similarly, some tall people can successfully
perform jobs that require stooping, kneeling, and crouching.
However, the requirements force workers to perform work
close to the ground. In this case, it is more efficient to have a
short distance between the upper body and the ground.
According to Hamermesh and Biddle’s (1994) reasoning,
b3 > 0 and b1 = b2 = 0 imply that height matters only in
those jobs where it is important. In this case, the height
premium results from productivity contributed by height.
On the other hand, b1 > 0 and b1 = b2 = 0 imply that
discrimination in favor of tall workers exists.11 Note that
the job requirements do not play a role in explaining
earnings. Discrimination in this case can result from either
employers’ or customers’ preferences for tallness. Given the
results in Table 4, specification (2) is useful for estimating
customer discrimination expressed by employers.
Table 5 shows that although evidence is not strong for
women, the three job requirements are related to lower
(2)
earnings to some extent (Columns 1, 3, and 5). When the
interaction term is added (Columns 2, 4, and 6), b1 > 0 and
b2 = b3 = 0 in all cases where b1 is large, and b3 is very
small. One could argue that because job requirements are
not strongly related to earnings when the interaction term
is excluded, the interaction term, when added, is likely to
be statistically insignificant. This argument may have
some substance, but the relationship between the third
job requirement (i.e., stooping/kneeling/crouching) and
earnings is statistically significantly for both men and
women. In addition, the size of the relationship is large:
men, whose jobs require those activities at least most of
the time, earn 14.6% less than those whose jobs do not
require such a high frequency; the figure for women is
12.3%. Even with this job requirement, only b1 is
10
The results indicate that an additional 1 cm is associated with a
0.32 kg higher grip strength for men. The figure for women is 0.24 kg.
After controlling for weight, the corresponding figures are 0.19 kg and
0.16 kg.
11
Hamermesh and Biddle (1994) also considered occupational crowd-
ing with b2 6¼ 0, but because this paper concerns employer and customer
discrimination, this case is not considered.

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10.1016/j.ehb.2013.12.011
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K. Sohn / Economics and Human Biology xxx (2014) xxx–xxx
statistically significant and positive, and its size is large.
This result is consistent with the story of customer
discrimination suggested by Table 4.
6. Conclusions
Since Hamermesh and Biddle’s (1994) seminal paper,
studies on premiums attached to physical appearance have
grown fast in the context of the Mincerian earnings
equation. Among many features of physical appearance,
height has garnered much attention because it is a
relatively good measure of an individual’s growth envir-
onment. Once genetic factors are taken into account, tall
people are more productive and consequently earn more.
The positive relationship between height and earnings has
been found in many countries. Although efforts have been
made to estimate the height premium for some developed
and developing countries, little attention has been paid to
Indonesia despite its large population, Islamic culture, and
fast growing economy. More interesting, Indonesians are
one of the shortest populations in the world, while their
fast growing economy demands tallness much. In this
situation, height is likely to be highly valued, and this
paper confirms that this is the case.
It could be argued that the portion of the height premium
unexplained by productivity is due to omitted productivity
variables. If this is the case, the height premium in this paper
does not arise from discrimination but from productivity.
This is a limitation of this paper and is mainly the result of
limitations of the data. The IFLS covers the period between
1993 and 2007. Therefore, the period is not long enough to
provide individual characteristics in childhood, adolescence,
and adulthood that may explain the height premium in the
manner suggested by Persico et al. (2004) and Case and
Paxson (2008). Moreover, as Lundborg et al. (2014) demon-
strated, as long as the data provide rich and quality
Men
.04
.03
Density
.02
.01
0
20 40
Fig. A.1. Kernel density of age by sex. Notes: The age range is between 20 and 65.
Please cite this article in press as: Sohn, K., The height premium in Indonesia. Econ. Hum. Biol. (2014), http://dx.doi.org/
10.1016/j.ehb.2013.12.011
13
information on individual characteristics (particularly,
physical capacity and cognitive and noncognitive skills),
it is possible to explain the height premium even in cross-
sectional data. Although IFLS4 contains more information
than the previous follow-ups, it does not provide enough
information to entirely explain the height premium. Never-
theless, the patterns of changes in the coefficient on height
in Tables 1 and 2 suggest that it is not likely that omitted
productivity variables play a significant role in explaining
the height premium. Further, other findings support the
argument that the premium results from discrimination.
Future research can improve on this paper. First, an
obvious area for future research is to find better data and to
check whether the unexplained portion of the height
premium is indeed due to discrimination. Second, if this
discrimination does exist, it would be of interest to know
more about who discriminates against whom. Because
women generally prefer tall men in mating, it could be that
women discriminate against short men but not necessarily
against short women. The economics literature on discrimi-
nation rarely discusses this issue. Third, it is possible to
estimate the return to a certain environmental factor through
height. As mentioned in the conceptual framework, some
environmental factors contribute to height, which in turn
affects earnings. Whether the height premium results from
productivity or discrimination, the environmental factors
yield returns. This issue is timely given the fast-growing body
of research on the importance of the childhood environment
to human capital and labor market outcomes.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Ki Seong Park, John Komlos, and 6
anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments.
Appendix
Women
60 20 40 60
Age
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14 K. Sohn / Economics and Human Biology xxx (2014) xxx–xxx

Table A.1
Descriptive statistics.

Continuous variable Men Women

Mean SD Mean SD

Natural log of earnings past year 15.58 1.24 15.06 1.41

Height (cm) 162.4 6.1 151.2 5.6
Weight (kg) 58.8 10.4 54.4 10.7
Years of schooling 8.7 4.3 8.2 4.9
Potential work experience 23.1 13.3 23.8 14.5
Tenure 8.2 9.1 7.4 8.7
Number of words recalled 8.9 3.5 8.6 3.8
Grip strength (kg) 37.5 9.2 22.9 8.0
Work hours per week 45.1 18.3 41.2 22.2
Firm size (person) 49.9 211.2 59.7 255.3

Discrete variable Percentage Percentage

Non-Javanese 57.7 55.6

Javanese 42.4 44.4
Not married 16.0 28.8
Married 84.0 71.2
Not participating in arisans 84.2 56.4
Participating in arisans 15.8 43.7
Worked < 26 weeks past year 13.7 16.1
Worked  26 weeks past year 86.3 84.0
Not union or business association 90.6 90.8
Union or business association 9.4 9.2
Agriculture, forestry, fishing, hunting 28.4 15.8
Mining, quarrying 1.0 0.1
Manufacturing 12.9 17.0
Electricity, gas, water 0.5 0.1
Construction 8.2 0.9
Wholesale, retail, restaurants, hotels 17.8 36.4
Transportation, storage, communications 6.4 0.3
Finance, insurance, real estates, business services 1.2 0.9
Social services 23.3 28.5
Activities that cannot be classified 0.2 0.1
Rural 45.1 38.9
Urban 54.9 61.1

Self-reported job characteristics

Lots of physical effort: infrequent 37.7 58.3
Lots of physical effort: frequent 62.3 41.7
Lifting heavy loads: infrequent 59.0 82.4
Lifting heavy loads: frequent 41.0 17.6
Stoop/kneel/crouch: infrequent 45.8 55.9
Stoop/kneel/crouch: frequent 54.2 44.1
Good eyesight: infrequent 40.7 45.3
Good eyesight: frequent 59.3 54.7
Intense concentration, attention: infrequent 39.8 44.8
Intense concentration, attention: frequent 60.3 55.3
Skills with dealing with people: infrequent 37.2 31.0
Skills with dealing with people: frequent 62.8 69.0
Work with computers: infrequent 91.4 89.8
Work with computers: frequent 8.6 10.3
Lots of stress: infrequent 92.6 94.6
Lots of stress: frequent 7.4 5.5

N 8670a 4880a
a
Notes: Depending on the availability of variables, sample sizes change, but they are close to the listed sample sizes.

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