Wednesdata - June 12 - Happy at Any Height?
Short men, and extreme women, are distressed and unsatisfied
If you poke around the internet, you’ll encounter the following claim: tall men are more desirable partners compared to short men, and women’s behavior on dating websites create a strong preference for tall men, with heights of 6 feet and over. Tall men face privileges and assumptions of competency and grade in day to day life that are withheld from short men. Height is associated with beauty and status among men, and beauty and status produce economic premiums independent of skills or abilities. Taller men thus face a vast system of privileges and advantages compared to shorter men, a system that exists beyond men’s control, personality, abilities, or behaviors.
It is thus logical to anticipate that men’s wellbeing - here I’m thinking of it in terms of life satisfaction and distress - should be stratified by height. This could happen in a few ways:
If the 6 foot threshold is real, then we should see a discontinuity of wellbeing between 5 foot 11 and 6 foot.
If there’s a more general height privilege, we should see a continuum with more height equaling more wellbeing.
If there is discrimination and mistreatment of shortness because of cultural norms, we should expect to see much worse wellbeing among shorter men, and fewer differences between, say, a 5’9” man and a 6’2” man.
If height, generally, is privileged - or represents people who are compositionally healthier and fitter (whatever that might mean) - we should see happier tall men and women.
I used the 2022 wave of the CDC’s Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) dataset. The BRFSS has information on the respondent’s height as well as two measures of wellbeing.
Mental Distress
“Now thinking about your mental health, which includes stress, depression, and problems with emotions, for how many days during the past 30 days was your mental health not good?”
I take the mean number of days.
Following some recent work by the economist Blanchflower, I take the percentage of folks who say they were distressed 30 out of the past 30 days. This is a measure of extreme distress.
Life Satisfaction
“In general, how satisfied are you with your life?” Ranges from 1 (Very Dissatisfied) to 4 (Very Satisfied)
First Swing
Let’s take all respondents between 18 and 64 and plot their distress and life satisfaction along height.
Life Satisfaction
Men’s life satisfaction increases from about 3.2-ish at 5’3” to about 3.35-ish at 6’0” and above. It looks like there’s a simple, albeit modest, increase by height.
Women’s life satisfaction increases between 4’11” and 5’4”. It stays relatively stable until about 5’10”, after which it declines quite a bit.
Men’s life satisfaction seems to simply increase with height. Women’s life satisfaction is an inverted u-shape.
Days Distressed
For women, we see a u-shape again. Very short, and very tall, women have more days distressed.
For men, we don’t see much of a pattern worth discussing. No relationship.
Extreme Distress
For women, we again see that extreme heights have more extreme distress - women under 5’1”, and women over 5’10”, stick out with more extreme distress.
Men under 5’6” stick out with much higher extreme distress. From 5’6” onward, there isn’t much of a trend.
Second Swing
There are a lot of reasons why these results might be muddied by other factors. Race is the most straightforward one I can think of. White Americans are taller than racial minorities. And racial minorities often face a system of experiences that range from straightforward discrimination to more nebulous mistreatment that likely produce distress. I plan to circle back to racial variation in a future Wednesdata soon, but let’s take a simple look at White respondents, who remain the weighted majority of the sample.
Life Satisfaction
A clear inverted u shape for women. Women under 5’2” and above 5’10” have lower satisfaction
Men under 5’6” clearly have lower life satisfaction. We kind of see an increase of life satisfaction with height from 5’6” onward, but it’s modest. It’s tough to read too much into 6’4” and beyond because the sample is so sparse.
Mean Distressed Days
Clear u-shape for women. Very short, and very tall, women have more distressed days.
Shorter men clearly have more distressed days, those under 5’6”. Not too much of a slope after that.
Extreme Distress
Again - very short women, under 5’1”, and very tall women, over 5’11”, have higher rates of extreme distress.
Shorter men, under 5’8”, have higher rates of extreme distress. There is not much variation after that.
Conclusions
6’0” for men is not a magical discontinuity. I am a bit skeptical of the discourse online that states that the world opens up beyond this height.
Height does not simply move wellbeing in a single direction across men and women. It’s thus unlikely that any connection between height and wellbeing is driven by some biological factor - e.g. hormones or fitness or whatnot.
Shorter men, and extremely-heighted women, have worse wellbeing. I see this as clearly reflecting cultural norms and stigma, but not in the way I typically see folks discussing it online. There are likely penalties and stigma for shortness that are shared across men and women. Women also likely face stigma for being taller than men - notice that the wellbeing flipped at roughly the mean male height, 5’10”? I suspect that this reflects a cultural expectation that men be taller than their (potential) partners.
There’s a lot more I want to look at - do we see similar trends by height within sex across racial groups? Do we see height gradients that are more pronounced among younger ages? Do other forms of advantage, like college degrees, moderate these trends? It does overall seem that status and stigma associated with height have a bit of wellbeing teeth.