Beauty and Salary: How Does Employee Attractiveness Affect Lifetime Pay? [infographic]

If you want to make as much money as possible in your lifetime, here’s some food for thought: Your chances of doing so are significantly higher if you’re attractive. This infographic shows the relationship between beauty and salary, and the numbers will astound you.

Here’s a figure to kick things off: $230,000. That’s the average lifetime difference between a beautiful person’s salary and an unattractive person’s salary. Hungry for more? Women who are 70 pounds under the average weight make an average of $62,500, whereas women who are 70 pounds over the average earn just $21,500. That pattern reverses for men: heavier males earn more than slim ones.

The relationship between beauty and salary even translates to the football field, where attractive NFL quarterbacks earn an average of $300,000 more than other quarterbacks with similar statistics. Tom Brady, Tony Romo and Tim Tebow are just some recent examples of this pay disparity in action.

Why do beautiful people end up attaining such success? Research indicates that it could be due to the copious amount of positive reinforcement attractive kids get versus the bias unattractive kids face. Over time, this reinforcement shapes children’s confidence and self-esteem, which in turn influences actual performance. Check out the full infographic below.

Beauty-benefits

(Photo credit: OnlineMBAPrograms.net)