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While researchers have long shown that tall people earn more than their shorter counterparts, it's not only social discrimination that accounts for this inequality -- tall people are just smarter than their height-challenged peers, a new study finds. "As early as age three -- before schooling has had a chance to play a role -- and throughout childhood, taller children perform significantly better on cognitive tests," wrote Anne Case and Christina Paxson of Princeton University in a paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research. The findings were based primarily on two British studies that followed children born in 1958 and 1970, respectively, through adulthood and a U.S. study on height and occupational choice. ----- The researchers explain that early nutrition is an important predictor of both intelligence and height. That makes sense, but then the problem to address would be adequate nutrition as it affects both intelligence and height, not the spurious conclusion that taller people are smarter. Moreover, children who have access to adequate nutrition will still be different heights as a result of genetic make-up. The bell-shaped curve for height attests to the fact that while children may grow at the same speed, they grow at different percentiles. To conclude that the child growing an average of 2 inches per year at the 75% is better off than the child growing an average of 2 inches per year at the 5% is based on heightist notions. The deeply ingrained heightism so pervasive in our culture and in the work force makes it easy for people to make assumptions that short people are inherently inferior rather than looking at the societal forces that lead to such discrimination. There was a study by David Kurtz, an Eastern Michigan University marketing professor. He asked 140 recruits to make a hypothetical hiring choice between two equally qualified applicants, one 6 feet 1 inch tall, and the other 5 feet 5 inches tall, for a sales job. Seventy-two percent "hired" the tall one, twenty-seven percent expressed no preference, and one percent chose the short one. This has nothing to do with actual intelligence and everything to do with heightism. This study by the Princeton economists is reminiscent of Arthur Jenson’s conclusions back in 1969 when he published an article in the Harvard Educational Review maintaining the whites are genetically superior in intelligence to blacks.
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