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I love lefties
Highly educated people earn more if they are left-handed. The pay gap, relative to right-handers, is especially strong for those with low earnings relative to their level of education (e.g., academics). If they are men they earn 15 percent more. Here is the paper.
This earnings result appears ungrounded but it does not surprise me. Left-handers have idiosyncrasies, obsessions, and downright insanities which lift some of them into productivity heaven. If they are not earning a lot they probably love what they do.
I like other left-handers (yes I am one) at a disproportionately high rate and they fit disproportionately into the right-hand-tail of the distribution of my liking. One of my absurd beliefs is that I can tell which people are
left-handers simply by observing their personalities and their charming bits of ever so slight yet always on the surface awkwardness.
Did you know that lefties also have higher rates of irritable bowel syndrome?
For some odd reason, I play all sports but basketball with my right hand.
Posted by Tyler Cowen on August 9, 2006 at 06:00 AM in Data Source | Permalink
Comments
How do people with low earnings "earn more"? do you mean "if they are in a profession with low earnings for the level of education" (i.e. government, journalism)?
I work in quant finance, and I would have trouble naming people in my field who don't have some idiosyncrasies or "slight yet always on the surface awkwardness"
Posted by: DK at Aug 9, 2006 8:05:43 AM
I'm right-handed but my mother made sure I was taught to eat with my fork in my left hand, as opposed to switching over. This has had some interesting results. I had a new dentist a couple of years ago say: "Ah, you're a leftie!" Apparently some dentists can tell by the pattern of cleaning on one side of your mouth versus the other. I gave her a funny look, and said: "No, I'm right-handed." She looked at me with puzzled look, I shrugged, and she carried on cleaning. That night when I went to go brush my teeth, I applied the toothpaste to the brush as usual, but when I went to actually start scrubbing away I realized, of course, that the brush was in my left hand. Apparently my mother's training has imprinted on me that any tool I put in my mouth should be in my left hand. Go figure.
Posted by: Peter Ash at Aug 9, 2006 8:11:49 AM
DK, they earn more relative to comparable right-handers. I've reworded the opening to make this clearer.
Posted by: Tyler Cowen at Aug 9, 2006 8:14:20 AM
Weren't all three significant candidates in one of the (somewhat) recent presidential elections left-handed? Must have been back when Perot was still running, because I definitely remember it being 3 for 3.
There are also studies that show left-handed men having more grandchildren. Why hasn't it swept the population? Well, it seems to be bad for women to be left-handed - so it looks like a case of balancing selection.
I will be interested to see what the mechanism is. The statistics clearly show an advantage, but so far only speculation as to what form it takes. FWIW I am strongly right-handed, though my twin brother is a lefty...
Posted by: bbartlog at Aug 9, 2006 9:22:11 AM
Unfortunately, lefthandedness does not pass along well. All 4 of my kids are righties, darnit!
Posted by: mkl at Aug 9, 2006 9:32:18 AM
All sports - soccer, too? :)
Interestingly, people are "footed". I've known a number of people who are right handed but left footed. I wonder if the neuroscientists have sorted that one out yet.
Posted by: Andy at Aug 9, 2006 9:33:04 AM
Generally, if I learned how to play a sport, or perform a task on my own, I do it left-handed. If the task requires a piece of equipment that's tailored to a particular hand (like a golf-club), then I perform it right-handed. I throw right-handed, but shoot baskets left-handed.
That always struck me as odd.
Posted by: Michael Stack at Aug 9, 2006 9:37:19 AM
It all sounds a little sinister to me...
Posted by: Martin at Aug 9, 2006 9:51:20 AM
There's a very good book by a Brit on the subject--see http://www.righthandlefthand.com/
Did you know that handedness implicates the structure of the universe?
Posted by: Bill Harshaw at Aug 9, 2006 10:18:01 AM
Married an idiosyncratic lefty who has in fact developed IBS in her 50s.
Posted by: Martin at Aug 9, 2006 10:56:25 AM
Tyler - did you have an older brother or father who was right handed to teach you those sports?
I am mostly righty, but I play hockey left-handed. It was my older (left-handed) brothers favorite sport when I was growing up.
Posted by: David Tufte at Aug 9, 2006 12:38:45 PM
I'm strongly left handed. A halo appeared around me when, as a child, I watched Ted Williams bat. However, I can eat anything.
Posted by: Bill Gardner at Aug 9, 2006 12:42:07 PM
My high school football team had a who threw left-handed but wrote (and neatly) right-handed. We teased him that he could be both the second string quarterback warming up on the sideline and the third-string quarterback charting plays on the clipboard.
Posted by: fasolamatt at Aug 9, 2006 1:19:46 PM
Andy,
I think most people have dominant opposite hand and leg sides, but the same foot sides. When you are transferring your weight and power to your dominant hand (layup, raquet swing, punch, etc.), it is very difficult to do it from the same leg side. However, when you are kicking a ball, for the same reason, your dominant foot will be the same side as your dominant hand.
Posted by: Patinator at Aug 9, 2006 2:11:20 PM
"Left-handers have idiosyncrasies, obsessions, and downright insanities..."
I feel much relieved to see someone else has noticed this. Years ago when I was a baseball player I noticed
left handed pitchers could never wear their caps straight, (this refers,of course, to those pure lefties who's right arm served no other purpose other than as a counter weight to keep them from falling over). So, whenever I came to the plate I was never sure whether they were looking at the catcher or somewhere up the first base line. My suspicions were somewhat confirmed by a story former Baltimore Orioles pitching coach, Ray Miller, used to tell. Seems he would get frustrated with lefty pitchers while running wind sprints. They could never run in a straight line and were always running into the other pitchers. Finally, he figured out if he started the lefties on the side of a hill they would all be in a straight line by the time they reached the finish line.
Posted by: Max at Aug 9, 2006 2:28:02 PM
i ve never figured out if i am right handed or left handed....write with the right.....pool and ping pong right handed...can ping pong lefty but not so well.....eat mostly right handed but can eat lefty if i desire. most sports i am lefty....basketball baseball and football i throw lefty...switch hit in baseball...kic soccer ball and football with left foot...box as a lefty......as i read this i think i may have problem!!! more...played tennis at very very low level and never hit the ballbackhanded...all forehands as i would switch racket....golfed lefty...
Posted by: jjj at Aug 9, 2006 3:44:30 PM
Isn't it just that leftys have a larger variance in results? So more people at the top, and more at the bottom? Kind of like comparing men to women, men are all the billionaires, and the street drunks.
More data, lefties make up a large percentage of astronauts (the cumulation of years of selection and hard training) and boxers (but there there is an explanation , in the lower levels, a righty has trouble adjusting to the "unusual" lefty, so they get a bit of a free ride until they reach the levels where leftys are no longer unusual).
Lefties also have much higher rates of death by accident, and murder. The last one I don't get, unless it's a function of also being more likely to be a drunken bum.
Posted by: Patrick at Aug 9, 2006 6:58:33 PM
Leftiness can be a setback: had friends in high-school who were denied jobs (at 'Taco Bueno', fer cryin' out loud) because the fast food places were layed out for the "right-handed".
What kinda world is that?
Posted by: SamK at Aug 10, 2006 1:01:58 AM
One full of left-handed Mexican immigrants.
Posted by: Martin at Aug 10, 2006 3:06:40 AM
One theory about difficulty in learning to read says that kids whose parents or teachers made them use their right hands when they were really lefties caused "mixed dominance" and a problem scanning the page of text. One of my seventh graders many years ago made an effort to write lefty because he was lefty everywhere else. His grades improved that year in my class anyway. Cause and effect or just the effort? I dunno. He was an excellent piano and saxophone player, by the way.
Posted by: Gray Lensman at Aug 14, 2006 1:03:29 PM
You want weird on the sports front, here goes:
I am left-handed - I write with my left hand. When it comes to sports, my right hand is the dominant one for throwing and related motions. It is my dominant hand for baseball, football and basketball. However, when it comes to racket sports, my left hand dominates. I play tennis and table tennis with my left hand. Here's the kicker - the service motion is tennis is reasonably close to a throwing motion. As a result, I serve right-handed and then immediately switch to my left hand to play the remainder of the point. I have played multiple sets of tennis where at the end, my opponent would point out that there was something odd about my style but that he wasn't sure what.
Posted by: Howard at Aug 15, 2006 12:28:30 PM
In 1992, all three presidential candidates were indeed lefthanded -- Clinton, Bush Sr. and Perot. At the time, I remember reading that the percentage of lefthanders in the general population was about 8.7 percent. So what were the odds against all three serious presidential candidates being lefties? 666 to 1. !!!!
Actually, 659.5 to 1. But close enough for those with weird cosmologies.
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Posted by: levan at Sep 12, 2006 3:29:47 AM
I am also left-handed, and also play sports right handed! I also suffer from IBS. So in terms of your questions... I guess I'm like you. I have trouble with baseball mostly - I want to catch and throw with my right hand... oh and the violin is completely impossible for me.
Posted by: Brad McCall at Oct 5, 2006 3:24:14 PM
MY GIRLFRIEND HAS IBS... badly... and yes she is a lefty.
in fact... I've had three serious girlfriends in my life.
They were all left handed. I don't understand them I think... It fascinates me to try to grasp some of the slightly different reasoning processes...
Posted by: bill at Oct 17, 2006 1:49:15 AM
