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Tall People Earn More

ayahner writes "Tall people earn considerably more money throughout their lives than their shorter co-workers, with each inch adding about $789 a year in pay, according to a new study. If this is true, I should make a killing! At 6'7" I tower over other developers. It's mostly a distraction, as I can see over even the highest cubes and if I stand just in the right spot, I can receive satellite transmissions. Saves on the cell phone bill. I'm going to go ask for a raise right now, if I can figure out how to work the printer..."

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  1. Re:So Why Won't Doctor's Help Short People Grow? by pballsim · · Score: 2, Informative

    Actually they do have something to make you grow. It's for people with a genetic disorder called, achondroplasia. This genetic disorder is an inherited disorder that prevents growth. They use a limb-lengthening technique.

    How it works:
    1. Break your bones in several different places.
    2. Attach metal rods so that your bones stay separated a few cm's aparth.
    3. Let the bones heal.
    4. Repeat until desired height.

    However this is a very painful procedure.

    Source:
    o Genetics Book
    o http://ghr.nlm.nih.gov/ghr/disease/achondroplasia

  2. Re:Dubious Study by indros13 · · Score: 3, Informative
    Actually, most scientists are fairly careful to control for all of the circumstances you mentioned. I've seen this information in several other places before, and they do control for those variables. I'm kind of surprised that everyone thinks this is crackpot science, given how height is as obviously a part of a "good-looks" package as attractiveness, and we all know that good looks gets all sorts of advantages.

    For those doubting Thomases:

    • A BBC story on the issue about a study tracking people born March 1958.
    • 1. Full details of this research will appear in Harper, B. 'Beauty, Statute and the Labour Market: A British Cohort Study', Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, 62, December 2000, pp773-802.
      2. The study sample of 11,000 people are members of the National Child Development Study. The NCDS cohort study tracks the lives of 17,733 people born in Britain in the first week of March 1958. They are now 42. They were last interviewed in 1991 when the sample had fallen to 11,407.
      Further information For further information, a copy of the full research article or to arrange an interview please contact Barry Harper (details below). London Guildhall University does not have an abbreviation. To avoid confusion with other organisations, please use only our full name. Thank you.
    --
    Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
  3. THEY DO GROW BONES... check this out ! by deathcow · · Score: 2, Informative
    I attended over 25 operations where Doctors did help people grow. Their OWN bones, by over 1 inch per month. Yes, you can be one inch taller per month if you so desire.

    It's called the Ilizarov Technique. It was discovered by a Russian doctor and named for him. The basic principle is this: (1) break someones leg, (2) hold it together just like a cast does , (3) tug on it by one millimeter per day, (4) the body fills in the gap with new bone.

    Not only that, but the body grows muscle, nerves, blood vessels as required to accomodate the new limb length.

    Not only can you make limbs longer, you can twist them back to normal directions, weed out angles left by accidents, etc. I saw an Atlanta Falcons player get his leg lengthened and rotated back into normal position.

    Why take bone grafts or coral or cadaver implants ?? Have your body grow its own bone.

    Not only that !!! When you take dwarves, and you lengthen their two humorous and their two femurs, it dumps so much growth hormones into the body that the torso, face, etc. grow to more normal proportions.

    All in all an incredible technique that is underrated.

    Why do I know this? I wrote the original embedded (8051) C software in a robotic distractor which allowed doctors to control this procedure precisely. A doctor could say "I want this limb to grow 1440 times per day, by 1/1440th per millimeter."... or "I want this limb to grow 360 times per day, by 1/360th of a millimeter."

    Most fascinating.. the Russians and typical American use is to increase the length of the limb by 1/4 mm four times per day. The device we made allowed much finer control... up to 1/1440th mm 1440 times per day. X-rays showed that the finer, closer to continuous growth "tugging" produced the most normal looking nerve and blood vessels.

    I saw this one guy who blew out 8" of his tibia with a shotgun, but the muscle and nerves stayed. Instead of amputating, they brought this guys foot WAY up, so he had this huge ball of muscle on the back of a tiny stump. Then they started growing !!! 200 days later this guy had his entire leg back.

    I saw this type stuff again and again while I was helping doctors install the robotic device on patients. Doctors cut a small opening, take chisels to the patients bone, break it, put the frame on, and start the machine tugging the limb apart slowly. It is pure magic.

    Deathcow

  4. Alternate Study from UPenn by kauffee · · Score: 2, Informative

    Being short, I've researched this topic a bit and while most of the research corroborates this study, another study done by UPenn economists provides an alternative hypothesis. Here's the link to the paper:
    http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id =293122

    Basically, their argument is that a person's relative adolescent height is a better indicator than their adult height. Short kids who end up tall earn like short people, while tall kids who end up short earn like tall people. You could extend this and probably make some kind of argument about a child's self-esteem and self-confidence as being the ultimate indicator in how well they do as adults.