It pays to be pretty, starting in high school

A new research paper finds that attractive young adults enjoy a pay advantage over their less attractive peers, and that advantage starts building as early as high school.

“There may be this kind of snowballing effect across time,” said Rachel Gordon, a sociology professor at the University of Illinois in Chicago, and one of the study’s co-authors.

The researchers found that, starting as early as high school, more attractive people were rated as more intelligent and more promising. They also got higher grades and were more likely to graduate from college than their peers.