Short, Heavy and Underrated? Teacher Assessment Biases by Children's Body Size
| Author | Sonja C. de New,Nicole Black |
| Published date | 01 October 2020 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/obes.12370 |
| Date | 01 October 2020 |
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©2020 TheAuthors. OxfordBulletin of Economics and Statistics published by Oxford University and John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
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OXFORD BULLETIN OF ECONOMICSAND STATISTICS, 82, 5 (2020) 0305–9049
doi: 10.1111/obes.12370
Short, Heavy and Underrated? Teacher Assessment
Biases by Children’s Body Size*
Nicole Black† and Sonja C. de New†,‡,§
†Centre for Health Economics, Monash Business School, Monash University, Caulfield,
Victoria, Australia. (e-mail: Nicole.Black@monash.edu)
‡IZA Institute of Labor Economics, Bonn, Germany.
(e-mail: Sonja.deNew@monash.edu)
§RWI Research Network, Essen, Germany
Abstract
We compare non-blind teacher assessments with blind national test scores in maths to
examine teacher-test score disparities by children’s height and weight. Relative to test
scores, shorter and heavier children are rated less favourably by teachers. This teacher-
test score discrepancy cannot be explained by the child’s behaviours, motivation to learn
or cognitive ability. Unobserved student fixed effects across subjects explain the teacher-
test score discrepancy by height, but not weight. Our analysis points to biased teacher
assessments as the most plausible explanation for the remaining teacher-test score gap by
weight. We find harsher teacher assessments are associated with a reduction in both the
child’s future test performance and liking for maths 4 years later.
I. Introduction
Appearance matters in today’s society. Differences in labour and marriage market out-
comes by physical appearance, typically measured by stature, body mass index (BMI)
and attractiveness are well documented (e.g. Hamermesh and Biddle, 1994; Sargent and
Blanchflower, 1994; Averett and Korenman, 1996; Harper, 2000; Oreffice and Quintana-
Domeque, 2010; Chiappori, Oreffice and Quintana-Domeque, 2012, 2016; Oreffice and
Quintana-Domeque, 2016). It is increasingly recognized that the origins of these socioeco-
nomic disparities by physical appearance may manifest in childhood, for example through
influences on the formation of cognitive and socioemotional skills (Mobius and Rosenblat,
2006). Persico, Postlewaite and Silverman (2004) show that the height premium for wages
can be traced back to being tall in adolescence, and suggest that teen social experiences
JEL Classification numbers: I24; I14; J24; J71.
*This paper uses unit record data from GrowingUp in Australia, the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children.The
study is conducted in partnership between the Department of Families,Housing, Community Services and Indigenous
Affairs (FaHCSIA), theAustralian Institute of Family Studies (AIFS) and the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS).
The findings and views reported in this paper are those of the authors and should not be attributed to FaHCSIA,
AIFS or the ABS. This research was supported by an Australian National Preventive Health Agency Fellowship
(2AUN2013F).
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are a likely channel, while Case and Paxson (2008) and Case, Paxson and Islam (2009)
suggest that cognitive achievement during childhood is a likely explanation for the wage
height premium. Mocan and Tekin (2010) show that the beauty premium for wages may
partly operate through a greater accumulation of cognitive skills during high school.
The important role of early human capital developmentin explaining later life disparities
by physical appearance is supported by recent studies showing a negative effect of being
short (Cinnirella, Piopiunik and Winter, 2011; Scholder et al., 2013; Schick and Steckel,
2015) or overweight (Ding et al., 2009; Black, Johnston and Peeters, 2015; Sabia and
Rees, 2015) on cognitive skill development and academic achievement during childhood
and adolescence. Despite a number of hypotheses, the underlying mechanism through
which weight and height (or body size) influence academic achievement remains unclear
(Scholder et al., 2013; Black et al., 2015). This paper focuses on one potential mechanism
– biased teacher assessments.
We propose that stereotyping and discrimination may lead to biased teacher assess-
ments. It is easy for stereotypes to affect judgements made by all individuals, including
teachers. Stereotypes are ‘beliefs about the characteristics, attributes, and behaviours of
members of certain groups’ (Hilton and von Hippel, 1996, p.240). Such beliefs maybe held
unconsciously,and they may have positive or negativeconnotations. Stereotyping can lead
to discriminatory behaviours among teachers by altering the lens through which they per-
ceive their students’ability (Ferguson, 2003; Jussim and Harber,2005). Rather than through
prejudice, stereotyping can also influence teacher assessments through a process referred
to as ‘statistical discrimination’ (Burgess and Greaves, 2013), whereby assessments are
informed by a weighted average of information particular to the individual student and
their group.
Certain traits (such as being tall or obese) can elicit expectations from others, includ-
ing teachers, based on stereotypes. A teacher’s perceptions and expectations of a child’s
ability may affect the child’s academic development by influencing the achievement goals
that teachers set, the teaching strategies employed, and the energy and effort used in the
classroom (Ferguson, 2003). This can affect the opportunities that children have to learn
and the grades they are given. At the same time, through what is known as ‘self-fulfilling
prophecies’, a teacher’s expectations can impact the actual performance of students by
influencing their self-belief and own learning goals, strategies and effort (Ferguson, 2003;
Jussim and Harber, 2005).
A large literature in social psychology has shown that physically attractive people are
perceived to be more intelligent, socially skilled, warm and sociable (Feingold, 1992).
The literature also suggests that height is generally linked with perceptions of positive
attributes, such as attractiveness, competencyand social status, especially for men (Jackson
and Ervin, 1992). However, negative perceptions of heavier individuals are widespread in
Western societies; overweight and obesity are often associated with characteristics such as
laziness, lacking self-discipline, sloppiness, low intelligence and incompetence for both
males and females (Puhl and Heuer, 2009). Such stereotypes have been shown to exist
in many settings, including in schools, and appear to be upheld by educators, peers and
parents of children (Puhl and Latner, 2007).
Stereotypes may evolve from true differences in productivity and performance. For
example, Cipriani and Zago (2011) found that physically attractive economics students
©2020 The Authors. Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics published by Oxford University and JohnWiley & Sons Ltd.
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