Seminar

Brains versus Brawn: Labor Market Returns to Intellectual and PhysicalHealth Human Capital in a Developing Country

John Maluccio (Middlebury College)

March 24, 2011, 11:00–12:30

Toulouse

Room MF 323

Development Economics Seminar

Abstract

Previous studies report that schooling and adult height have significant associations with wages. But schooling and height are imperfect measures of adult cognitive skills (“brains”) and strength (“brawn”); further they are not exogenous. Analysis of rich Guatemalan longitudinal data over 35 years finds that proximate determinants—adult reading comprehension skills and fat-free mass—have significantly positive associations with wages, but only brains, and not brawn, is significant when both human capital measures are treated as endogenous. Even in a poor developing economy in which strength plausibly has rewards, labor market returns are increased by brains, not brawn.