Washington, July 13 (ANI): Taller men are able to earn more money than their shorter counterparts, according to a study.
The study suggests that taller people make more money simply because they are perceived to be more intelligent and powerful.
The study, conducted in Australia, found that men who are 6-foot tall had annual incomes nearly 1,000 dollars more than men two inches shorter.
“Our estimates suggest that if the average man of about 178 centimetres [5 feet 10 inches] gains an additional five centimetres [2 inches] in height, he would be able to earn an extra 950 dollars per year – which is approximately equal to the wage gain from one extra year of labour market experience,” Live Science quoted study co-author Andrew Leigh, an economist at the Australian National University, as saying.
Arianne Cohen, author of ‘The Tall Book’ said: “The truth is, tall people do make more money. They make 789 dollars more per inch per year.”
Cohen says there’s nothing else that differentiates these people other than their height.
“They’re not nicer. They’re not prettier. They’re not anything else. But they’ve sort of gotten a halo in society at this point,” Cohen said.
Cohen crafted out her book using a 2003 review of four large U.S. and UK studies led by Timothy Judge, a management professor at the University of Florida.
Judge and his colleague concluded that someone who is 7 inches taller – for example, 6 feet versus 5 feet 5 inches – would be expected to earn 5,525 dollars more per year.
Height was found to be more important than gender in determining income and its significance doesn’t decline with age.
Judge said that being tall might boost self-confidence, helping to make a person more successful and also prompting people to ascribe more status and respect to the tall person.
Of course all such studies generate averages. A shorter person can certainly beat the odds, and not every tall person is raking it in.
Cohen says the pay advantage is conferred partly because taller people tend to exude leadership.
“Tall people tend to act like a leader from a very young age because other children relate to them like a slightly older peer. In the workplace, when you’re automatically acting as a leader, that’s really important when it comes time for promotion,” she said.
The study has been published in The Economic Record by Wiley-Blackwell. (ANI)
Californians say “baby, baby, no more drilling”
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar confronted a host of sea creatures and polar bears on Thursday as costumed Californians told the new administration ‘no’ to offshore oil drilling.
Salazar did not hint at the contents of President Barack Obama’s energy policy, but said it would address climate change and include oil and gas.
“We’re not going to turn off the oil and gas requirements we have for this country overnight or even in a decade. We’re going to see oil and gas production,” he told a packed hearing on offshore drilling.
The crowd booed a lonely supporter of offshore drilling and waved dollar bills to signify that they thought increased production of oil and gas was a sell-out of environmental policy.
Californians, known for their cars as well as their love of the outdoors, on the whole have been less united.
Last summer, when gasoline prices surged above $4 a gallon and chants of “drill, baby, drill” became a rallying cry at the Republican National Convention, a majority of Californians supported offshore drilling for the first time.
The July poll by the Public Policy Institute of California found 51 percent of Californians favored expanding offshore drilling, up 10 points from a year earlier.
But the poll also found that 52 percent of Californians believe global warming is a serious threat to their state.
Last week the Board of Supervisors of California’s Santa Barbara County, the site of a 1969 oil spill that galvanized the modern environmental movement, voted to reverse a decision backing offshore energy development.
SHAPING NATIONAL ENERGY POLICY
When Salazar took office in January he was handed a five-year plan drafted in the final days of the Bush administration to open parts of the Atlantic, Gulf Coast, Pacific, and Alaska to outer continental shelf drilling between 2010 and 2015.
The outer continental shelf is 1.75 billion acres of federally administered sea floor, the equivalent of 80 percent of the United States landmass. As of 2006, the shelf was believed to have about 87 billion barrels of recoverable oil and 420 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.
At current prices of about $50 a barrel, only about 50 percent of the remaining reserves are economically recoverable, according to a federal report.
“Our national policy has been hijacked by ‘drill, baby, drill,’” California Congresswoman Jackie Speier told the audience. “The new rallying cry is ‘baby, baby, no more drilling.’”
California Lieutenant Governor John Garamendi told reporters funds should be spent on clean energy such as solar thermal, wind and geothermal. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger targets 33 percent of electricity from renewables by 2020.
“We’re on the very early stages of a new industrial revolution, a new industrial revolution not based on fossil fuels but, rather, based on renewable energy,” Garamendi said.
But the country will not be able to avoid oil, chief economist of the American Petroleum Institute John Felmy said in an interview with Reuters prior to the hearing.
“We need energy efficiency, we need alternatives, but we also need oil and gas,” he said, noting that oil provides power for 96 percent of all transportation.
“Hopefully we will see a fleet of electric cars come in place, but until they do, there’s no way,” he said.
No drilling policy is expected until after the comment period ends on September 21, but Salazar said an energy policy should be made public by the end of 2009.
(Additional reporting by Braden Reddall in San Francisco)