
Popularity in high school yields a 10% wage premium 40 years later - wallflower
http://privatewww.essex.ac.uk/~agaleo/wp_files/NewStuff/Popularity_final_15July2012.pdf
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rwallace
Surely it's not that popularity in high school gets you higher wages later,
but that charisma gets you both of these things?

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sukuriant
Nope. It's clearly the popularity in high school. It's amazing what sort of
effects your early years, and especially those people around you in your
middle years can have. What happens is, basically, everyone in your high
school class calls up your future employer and says either "raise his wage" or
"lower his wage". The future employer uses their consensus to decide your
salary. It's really fascinating.

In other news, ice cream truck drivers now on trial as accessories to murder
during summer time.

[edit: So it doesn't come off as otherwise, I'm not snarking you. From a
preliminary glance, it certainly looks like they might be doing that whole
"correlation == causation" bug that can happen very frequently. Your analysis
seems reasonable to me]

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smokeyj
Trying too hard

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luu
The scribd link is down for me, but there's a free version available here:
[http://privatewww.essex.ac.uk/~agaleo/wp_files/NewStuff/Popu...](http://privatewww.essex.ac.uk/~agaleo/wp_files/NewStuff/Popularity_final_15July2012.pdf)

If you don't want to read the whole paper, the interesting sections are, Table
2, sections 3.2 and 3.2 (including Table 3), and, of course, the intro and
conclusion.

Frankly, I'm surprised the wage premium for popularity is so low. The wage
premium for managers (and execs) is high, and folks who have good people
skills are much more likely to become managers. So, why isn't the wage premium
higher?

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followmylee
I feel like this is much more about the results of high school popularity
(confidence, self-assuredness, dare I say getting laid?) than the actual
implementation of popularity itself

