Statistical Discrimination, Productivity, and the Height of Immigrants

Building on the economic research that demonstrates a positive relationship between height and worker ability, this paper compares the wage returns to height for immigrants and natives to explore possible explanations for the positive wage-height gradient. Using multiple data sets, the paper presents a robust empirical finding that the wage gains associated with height are almost twice as large for immigrants than for native-born individuals. This wage relationship occurs because the productivity gap between tall and short immigrants is greater than the productivity gap between tall and short native-born workers. The paper next tests for the possibility that in the relative absence of other sources of information about immigrants, employers place more weight on height for immigrants than for native-born individuals. The evidence does not support the hypothesis of statistical discrimination based on height.