Science Says Tall People Are More Productive At Work

Science has had a lot to say about being tall — studies have shown everything from higher potential earnings throughout one's life to increased happiness and more. A new study has found that being tall may also be a sign that you're more productive than your less-tall peers, something based on the long-term monitoring of more than 5300 men in Indonesia. Across a seven-year time span, researchers found that taller men were more productive than shorter peers, something they based on hourly earnings.

Determining whether something is attributable to height is tricky, but the researchers went to great lengths to control for other possibly influential factors. What they were left with was distinctly higher earnings among taller men, with the earnings being highest amongst the tallest men, and lowest amongst the shortest men.

What's interesting, though, is that being tall doesn't necessarily mean someone is better at their job than someone else — rather, the study found that tall people are rewarded simply because they're tall (someone being more inclined to buy their product versus the same product offered by a shorter person, for example), and that leads to a more productive workday, which itself leads to better career growth and earnings.

The study says:

We have also shown that while height does predict occupational choice, taller men earn a premium within occupations. To wit, in our study setting, height does not appear to be a proxy for cognition or strength, to the extent they are well-measured in our study ... Not only are taller men happier, healthier and more productive, but they likely benefited from a reduced burden of infection and inflammation during the first few years of life that construed many benefits