Europe: Height is positively associated with leadership for women, no effect for men; for women, absolute and relative height are about equally strong

About the Relation between Height and Leadership: Evidence from Europe. Felix Bittmann. Economics & Human Biology, November 15 2019, 100829. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ehb.2019.100829

Highlights
•    The study investigate the association between height and leadership in Europe.
•    Height is positively associated with leadership for women.
•    There is no effect for men when controlling for education and occupational position.
•    For women, absolute and relative height are about equally strong.

Abstract: To better explicate the well-researched finding that taller individuals have higher wages on average, potential mechanisms should be studied in detail. The present analysis investigates the relationship between height and the probability of being in a leadership position in the workplace using multinational European Social Survey data from 19 countries. Studying full-time, employed individuals between 20 and 55 years of age reveals considerable country differences which is beneficial for the estimated multilevel models as variation is increased.

The results indicate a statistically significant effect whereby women are 0.15 percentage points more likely to be in a leadership position for each additional centimetre of absolute height when controlling for education and occupational position whereas there is no effect for men.

In order to study the relevance of absolute vs relative height, which is the difference to the local peer-group, regional data is utilized. The main findings are that there is no effect of relative height for men but a statistically significant effect for women. For them, absolute and relative effects are about equally strong.