- Each inch of height above average is worth $789 per year, according to a study published in the Journal of Applied Psychology.
- Put another way, this means that someone who is 6 feet tall earns, on average, nearly $166,000 more during a 30-year career than someone who is 5 feet 5 inches–even when controlling for gender, age and weight.
- This is over and above the gender wage gap that still has women earning, on average, 74 cents for every dollar that men earn.
- Tall women are respected more, seen as more authoritative, and more likely to be promoted to management-level positions.
- According to studies, tall women are seen as more “intelligent, assertive and independent”, while short women are considered more “nurturing” and to be better mothers. This leads to a workplace bias where taller women are considered more suited to ambitious careers, while shorter women are dismissed and relegated to more traditional roles as homemakers.
- A Gallup poll showed that 71% of women believe that taller than average women have an easier time being respected at work, and 66% believe that taller women have an easier time being promoted at work.
- US data shows that the height gap for both genders widens over the course of a career, with the height premium accounting for approximately $1,000 per inch for women once they’d been in the workplace for about a decade: