Ugly People Break Stuff

Found through the Washington Post, economists have determined that ugly people are more likely to commit crimes than “normals” and us pretty people are less likely than everyone else to beat, steal or sell drugs. The authors give two reasons for the results

First, a labor market reward to beauty motivates young adults (ages 18-26) to sort themselves on the margin such that unattractive ones find it more advantageous to engage in crime. Second, beauty in high school has a separate, independent effect on crime.Here, the pathway is from being unattractive in high school to undesirable high school experience and diminished human capital formation in high school.

The only solution I have for the first argument is a pre-emptive strike, in which we lock up all the ugo’s before they can take our car stereos. For the second, seperate but equal high schools segregated by attractiveness could lessen the effect on some of the ugly’s. The ugly schools could even have celebrities like Danny Devito, Sam Cassell and Rene Russo give talks about how they overcame their disabilities without criminal records.

The paper by Naci Mocan and Erdal Tekin was interesting top to bottom, and less offensive than this post. It does make one wonder if people with strange names are more likely to write economics papers.