Ugly Criminal

Using data from three waves of Add Health we find that, consistent with theoretical expectations, being very attractive reduces a young adult’s (ages 18-26) propensity for criminal activity and being unattractive increases it. A variety of tests suggest that this result is not likely because beauty is acting as a proxy for socioeconomic status, although we cannot rule out the possibility that some of the observed association between beauty and crime might be due to unobserved factors. Being very attractive is also positively associated with wages and with adult vocabulary test scores, which suggests the possibility that beauty may have an impact on human capital formation. We demonstrate that, especially for females, holding constant current beauty, high school beauty (pre-labor market beauty) has a separate impact on crime, and that high school beauty is correlated with variables that gauge various aspects of high school experience, such as GPA, suspension or having being expelled from school, and problems with teachers. These results are suggestive of two handicaps faced by unattractive individuals. First, a labor market penalty provides a direct incentive for unattractive individuals toward criminal activity. Second, the level of beauty in high school is associated with criminal propensity 7-8 years later, which seems to be due to the impact of the level of beauty in high school on human capital formation, although this second avenue seems to be effective for females only. These findings are robust to numerous specification and robustness checks.