The effects of prenatal testosterone on adult wages: Evidence from russian rlms data and measured 2d: 4d digit ratios

Type Working Paper
Title The effects of prenatal testosterone on adult wages: Evidence from russian rlms data and measured 2d: 4d digit ratios
Author(s)
Publication (Day/Month/Year) 2014
URL https://wp.hse.ru/data/2014/11/21/1101975248/71EC2014.pdf
Abstract
There is now a large literature on the correlates of prenatal androgen exposure and various individual measures of performance in sports, business, or schooling. However, there is still relatively limited evidence of the impact of prenatal androgens on life achievement. Using data from the Russian longitudinal survey and measured digit ratios, we found that age-corrected market wages are nonlinearly correlated with low measured 2D:4D ratios signifying higher prenatal testosterone. Unlike earlier work on noncognitive correlates of labor market wages, our findings indicate a clear-cut optimum 2D:4D ratio for women’s wages with higher and lower 2D:4D being associated with lowered wages. However, the size of these effects is small, especially compared to the influence of education on income.

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