I would think twice before concluding about taller people being smarter than others – completely. I have read this 53-page research report done by Anne Case and Christina Paxson and funded by the National Bureau of Economic Research of Massachusetts. More research along this line should be undertaken to validate the findings.
There is somewhat an over-generalization in its abstract and introduction -
“It has long been recognized that taller adults hold jobs of higher status and, on average, earn more than other workers." They begin their list of sources with a research done in 1915. In 1915, researches done during that time may be as crude as time could tell, not to mention research findings that have contexts some worlds apart from our context 90 years later.
To be fair, the two women researchers (both tall) recognize some limitations in the research. They mention Tanner (1979) as saying that the precise links between height and cognition are still not well understood. James Tanner is the author of “A Concise History of Growth Studies from Buffoon to Boas.”
They also said, “If our hypothesis is correct, it is possible that employers with incomplete information about the cognitive ability of their workers practice height-based statistical discrimination.” Clearly, therefore, height is only an indicator and not a cause of being smart – as the title of this news story may suggest.
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