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.

"Height matter for career success," said professor Timothy Judge of University of Florida. "These findings are troubling in that, with a few exceptions such as professional basketball, no one could argue that height is an essential ability required for job performance nor a bona fide occupational qualification." Judge and Daniel Cable, a business professor at the University of North Carolina, analyzed results of four large-scale studies in the United States and Britain that followed thousands of participants from childhood to adulthood, examining details of their work and personal lives. The study was controlled for gender, weight and age, and found that each inch in height added about $789 a year in pay. "If you take about literally hundreds of thousands of dollars of earnings advantage that a tall person enjoys." Judge said.

Greater height boosted subjective ratings of work performance, including supervisors' evaluations of how effective someone is on the job, and also raised objective measures of performance, such as sales volume.

The relationship between height and earnings was particularly strong in sales and management but was also present in less social occupations such as engineering, accounting and computer programming, the study found.

　根据一项最新研究成果，个高的人一辈子所挣的钱要比个矮的人多得多——身高每增加一英寸，年收入就会增加大约789美元。

　“身高关系着事业成功。”佛罗里达大学的蒂莫西贾古说，“这一发现的恼人之处在于，除了职业篮球等少数行当之外，没人会说身高是一种决定工作表现的基本能力，而它也不是什么正经的职业资格。”贾古和北卡罗莱纳大学的商业教授丹尼尔凯布尔此前在英美两国完成了4项大型研究，对数以千计的参与者进行了从童年到成年的跟踪调查，调查内容涉及参与者工作和个人生活的细节。他们对这些研究的结果进行了分析，并剔除了性别、体重和年龄等因素的影响。他们发现，身高每增加1英寸，年收入就会增加大约789美元。贾古说：“如果把这样的收入增长放到30年的职业生涯中来考虑并把结果累加起来，那就意味着‘高人’会实实在在的多挣几十万美元。”

　较高的身高会提高别人对你工作表现的主观评价，包括上司对你工作效率的评价，也会使衡量工作表现的客观数字，比如销量有所提高。

研究发现，身高和收入之间(正比例)关系在销售和管理等职业中表现得尤为突出，并且在工程技术、会计以及计算机程序设计等不那么社会化的职业中也有体现。