As a scarce endowment, beauty commands a premium that has been widely discussed. Using data from the China Family Panel Studies (CFPS) spanning 2010–2022, this study examines the impact of facial attractiveness (beauty) on happiness. Trend analysis shows a tick-shaped association between beauty and happiness.
However, after controlling for additional variables, this tick-shaped pattern is no longer evident; instead, a linear relationship emerges. Beauty facilitates the attainment of more favorable outcomes, such as higher satisfaction with job security, work environment, working hours, and promotion opportunities in the labor market, thereby contributing to increased happiness. Furthermore, this study identifies heterogeneous effects of beauty on happiness across gender, age, and education.
Overall, these findings provide robust evidence for designing interventions aimed at enhancing happiness and reducing inequality in the workplace. This study was supported by the Philosophy and Social Sciences Planning Project of Zhejiang (grant number: 25SSHZ112YB), the General Program of the National Social Science Fund (grant number: 25BJL050), the Youth Program of National Social Science (grant number: 21CJL021), and the General Program of China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (grant number: 2023M732229). School of Business, Shaoxing University, Shaoxing, China School of Economics and Management, Hanjiang Normal University, Shiyan, China School of Business, Hubei University, Wuhan, China Correspondence to Baoxi Li or Jing Huang.
The authors declare no competing interests. This study involved a secondary analysis of de-identified, publicly available individual-level data from the China Family Panel Studies (CFPS). The original CFPS project and its data collection procedures were reviewed and approved by the Biomedical Ethics Committee of Peking University (approval number: IRB00001052-14010), and the project has undergone continuous ethical reviews for each survey wave.
As the present study used only publicly available, de-identified data with no direct contact with human subjects and no collection of new identifiable personal information, no additional ethical approval was required for this secondary analysis. Written informed consent was obtained from all original CFPS participants prior to their enrolment. Participants aged 15 years and above signed the informed consent form themselves, while for those under 15 years of age, written consent was obtained from their legal guardians.
For the present secondary analysis, no additional informed consent was required, as the data were accessed in accordance with the CFPS user agreement, which strictly prohibits any attempt to re-identify individual participants. All methods were carried out in accordance with relevant guidelines and regulations. Publisher’s note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
