By Bae Ji-sook
Staff reporter
Tens of thousands of women go under the knife every year to look better, boost their confidence and moreover, enjoy a better lifestyle.
But their transformation may have far less impact on their income and overall living than they may have expected, a group of professors revealed Tuesday.
It may take about 30 years for them to collect on their “investment,” said Professor Ryu Keun-kwan of Seoul National University and Professor Lee Su-houng of University of Maryland in their paper for the World Congress on Economics.
Their team gathered a total of 112 before and after photographs of those who received cosmetic surgery. They distributed them to 50 people taking undergraduate or graduate courses at Seoul National University and asked them to grade the pictures on a scale of one to five.
The level of recognition was larger among those who moved from “unattractive” to “okay” than those who improved from “okay” to “beautiful.”
Cosmetic surgery has helped them land jobs with an average of 0.1 percent higher salary among males and 1.5 percent among females.
“The average fee for cosmetic surgery on the nose and eyes is around 7 million won ($6,500) and an average Korean makes around 32 million won a year. It means that it will take more than 30 years for them to offset the medical fees with their ‘incentives’from the surgeries,” the paper said.
There was an exception ― if one becomes exceptionally beautiful, their income skyrockets and are able to pay off the medical fee in just six years.
For their second task, the team looked into the profile of 20,689 members of matchmaking agency Sunoo and graded their appearance as A, B, C or D.
They found that men with class A looks were paid 9 percent more than those in grade C. Women in grade A were paid 5 percent higher compare to Cs. However, the income gap wasn’t distinctive between Cs and Ds.
Women who married men with class A looks had a 15 percent higher income than wives of class C-men.
The same theory was adapted to women ― the prettier ones’ husbands made an average of 6 percent more than those of less beautiful ones. The difference between C and D showed insignificant differences.
“Being beautiful is helpful in both marriage and the job market in general. But it isn’t as powerful as many people think. The only reason people have fantasies about surgery is because they have heard about a very small handful of successful fairytale cases,” Ryu said.