Thing of Beauty is a Joy Forever

In the article “Thing of Beauty is a Joy Forever"? Returns to Physical

Attractiveness over the Life Course Jaeger analyzes the influences of physical attractiveness (facial attractiveness, Body Mass Index and height) on socio-economic and marital success over a lifetime. Jaeger uses previous research, and he built up his argument base on their results, but he adds up more information. The Jaeger’s argument is basically that men and women that have better physical attractiveness have higher earnings and socio-economic statue than short and not attractive men. Also, men and women with more attractive faces are more likely to get married when they are younger, and physical attractiveness is unrelated to the income and socio-economic statues of their partners.

            Jaeger indicates that there have been lots of researches on this hypothesis, but none of them had accurate results because it wasn’t done as efficiently and in the way that could get valid results as Jaeger did. Jaeger claims that the previous research was not accurate as his because the data collected in the previous research are from two periods of time or data collected at one point in time or in a short time. However, Jaeger used more longitudinal data over time in his research, and he used longer period of time that most research had been done on, and he combined all type of different kind of research to show the effects of attractiveness on success.

Jaeger found out that a person gets advantage from being attractive in whole life. Despite other research that was focus on one situation, socio-economic or marital or spousal socio-economic, he analyzed all the situations and the effects of attractiveness on each of them. At the previous research physical attractiveness is divided in different component like facial, BMI, and height, and each of this components are studied separately. However, Jaeger incorporated all the component of physical attractiveness and analyzed them.