Our main finding is that height does have a strong positive effect on life satisfaction

Height and life satisfaction: Evidence from 27 nations. Nazim Habibov, Rong Luo, Alena Auchynnikava, Lida Fan. American Journal of Human Biology, November 6 2019. https://doi.org/10.1002/ajhb.23351

Abstract
Objectives: To evaluate the effect of height on life satisfaction.

Methods: We use data from a recent multi‐country survey that was conducted in 27 nations.

Results: Our main finding is that height does have a strong positive effect on life satisfaction. These findings remain positive and significant when we use a comprehensive set of well‐known covariates of life‐satisfaction at both the individual and country levels. These findings also remain robust to alternative statistical specifications.

Conclusions: From a theoretical standpoint, our findings suggest that height is important in explaining life‐satisfaction independent of other well‐known determinants. From a methodological standpoint, the findings of this study highlight the need to explicitly control for the effect of heights in studies on subjective well‐being, happiness, and life‐satisfaction.

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5 | CONCLUSION
Recent developments in the literature have highlighted the important role that height plays in explaining life satisfac-tion. However, despite the strong theoretical underpinnings of a positive height effect on life satisfaction, surprisingly few studies have attempted to confirm the positive influence of height on life satisfaction, especially outside of developed countries. In the light of this evidence, the present study evaluates the effect of height on life satisfaction in 27 post-communist nations.

Our main finding is that height indeed does have a positive effect on life satisfaction. This finding remains significant when we use a comprehensive set of well-known covariates of life-satisfaction at both the individual and country levels. These findings also remain robust to alternative statistical specifications. We also found that greater height is associated with higher levels of satisfaction with one's financial situation, although the effect of height on job satisfaction is not significant. However, we found that the magnitude of the height effect is lower when compared with well-known covariates of life-satisfaction at the individual level such as health, age, income, education, and marital status. Likewise, the magnitude of the height effect is lower than well-known covariates of life-satisfaction at the country level as well as GDP growth, poverty level, economic freedom, social transfers to population, and democracy level.

The empirical findings discussed above have theoretical and methodological implications. From the theoretical stand-point, our findings suggest that lack of investments into high quality nutrition, hygiene, health, education, and positive environmental conditions prevent some children from attaining their full potential height. Not reaching full height will then be translated into poorer health, emotional, reproductive, educational, and labor market outcomes. In turn, these factors are responsible for the lower levels of life evaluation provided by shorter people. From the methodological stand-point, the findings of this study highlight the need to explicitly control for the effect of heights in studies on subjective well-being, happiness, and life-satisfaction. However, a number of limitations should be mentioned. Small country samples prevent us from conducting country-by-country analysis to uncover variations in the height effect across countries. In addition, even though we used a comprehensive set of control variables, we were not able to control for abilities due to limitations in our data set. Hence, we were not able to fully overcome the omitted variable problem inasmuch as cognitive and non-cognitive abilities could be correlated with both height and life-satisfaction. Future studies should focus on country differences in the height to life satisfaction effect by controlling for abilities. In addition, comparing the height to life satisfaction effect across developed, post-communist, and developing countries could provide another promising line of enquiry.