IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/elo/wpaper/2008-01.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Mirror, mirror on the wall: The effect of time spent grooming on wages

Author

Listed:
  • Jayoti Das

    () (Department of Economics, Elon University)

  • Stephen B. DeLoach

    () (Department of Economics, Elon University)

Abstract

It is well understood that personal grooming provides an important source of communication about individuals, their values and personalities. From an economic point of view, grooming is a non-market activity. The standard view is that time spent in non-market activities is counterproductive as it reduces work effort and job commitment. But grooming is different. There is reason to believe that certain productive personality traits may be inferred on the basis of personal grooming. Using data from the American Time Use survey, we investigate whether workers who spend more time grooming earn higher wages. The evidence shows that while higher levels of grooming time increases wages for men, there is no significant effect on women’s wages. We also find evidence that the returns to grooming are even larger for minority males.

Suggested Citation

  • Jayoti Das & Stephen B. DeLoach, 2008. "Mirror, mirror on the wall: The effect of time spent grooming on wages," Working Papers 2008-01, Elon University, Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:elo:wpaper:2008-01
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://org.elon.edu/econ/WPS/wp2008-01r2.pdf
    File Function: Revised version, 2009-06-08
    Download Restriction: no

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Christopher F Baum & Mark E. Schaffer & Steven Stillman, 2003. "Instrumental variables and GMM: Estimation and testing," Stata Journal, StataCorp LP, vol. 3(1), pages 1-31, March.
    2. Hansen, Lars Peter, 1982. "Large Sample Properties of Generalized Method of Moments Estimators," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 50(4), pages 1029-1054, July.
    3. Hamermesh, Daniel S. & Parker, Amy, 2005. "Beauty in the classroom: instructors' pulchritude and putative pedagogical productivity," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 24(4), pages 369-376, August.
    4. Hamermesh, Daniel S. & Meng, Xin & Zhang, Junsen, 2002. "Dress for success--does primping pay?," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 9(3), pages 361-373, July.
    5. Markus M. Mobius & Tanya S. Rosenblat, 2006. "Why Beauty Matters," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 96(1), pages 222-235, March.
    6. Douglas Staiger & James H. Stock, 1997. "Instrumental Variables Regression with Weak Instruments," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 65(3), pages 557-586, May.
    7. Hamermesh, Daniel S & Biddle, Jeff E, 1994. "Beauty and the Labor Market," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 84(5), pages 1174-1194, December.
    8. Joni Hersch & Leslie S. Stratton, 2002. "Housework and Wages," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 37(1), pages 217-229.
    9. Hersch, Joni, 1991. "The Impact of Nonmarket Work on Market Wages," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 81(2), pages 157-160, May.
    10. Joni Hersch & Leslie S. Stratton, 1997. "Housework, Fixed Effects, and Wages of Married Workers," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 32(2), pages 285-307.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Blog mentions

    As found by EconAcademics.org, the blog aggregator for Economics research:
    1. Men, start grooming!
      by Economic Logician in Economic Logic on 2008-01-17 14:08:00
    2. The American Time Use Survey and Economic Imperialism?
      by Dan Hirschman in A (Budding) Sociologist's Commonplace Book on 2008-03-01 03:13:00

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Josheski, Dushko, 2014. "Personnel Economics essay: Issues in Human Capital Theory, training and earnings of workers," EconStor Preprints 90913, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • J3 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs
    • J7 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Labor Discrimination

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Lists

    This item is featured on the following reading lists or Wikipedia pages:
    1. Economic Logic blog

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:elo:wpaper:2008-01. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Jim Barbour). General contact details of provider: http://edirc.repec.org/data/delonus.html .

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service hosted by the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis . RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.