Bad news, nerds. Those years of high school spent shuttered in a darkened room programming computers or playing Dungeons & Dragons might not pay off with a paycheck.
A paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research released Monday says there is a positive correlation between a person's popularity in high school and how much money they will make.
The researchers estimate that moving from the 20th percentile of high school popularity to the 80th percentile yields a 10% wage premium 40 years after graduation.
They determined students' popularity by asking more than 4,300 males from Wisconsin high schools to name their three best friends from their senior class in high school. By the study's criteria, the students who received the most votes are the most popular.
Only men were surveyed because the sampling group attended high school in 1957, and women who graduated from high school at that time had fewer job opportunities.
Even incremental increases in popularity had monetary benefits for the average high schooler. A unit increase in expected number of friendships translates into 2% higher wages 35 years later.
That increase is equivalent to 40% the wage premium that comes from an additional year in education. So, skipping SAT prep for a party might actually be worth it.
To determine the labor market returns for popularity, the researchers also investigated what makes people popular in high school.
To the chagrin of teens everywhere, the criteria they determined for acquiring popularity are more abstract than wearing the right clothes and being attractive (though those always help).
People who come from warm family environments, have similar characteristics to their classmates and whose qualities are relatively better than their classmates' tend to have more friendships.
A person with a higher degree of those things and more social skills is more likely to get a friendship nomination. Which, again, correlates to more money.
The idea is the more friends one acquires, the more skills for building positive social relationships they must have. People who can build positive social relationships are also better suited to adjust to social situations.
Having those skills also makes it easier for people to migrate from the social circles of the high school world to the social circles of the working world.
The respondents entered the professional world before the widespread dissemination of the internet, which means the value of Facebook friending or LinkedIn requesting the person someone sat next to in math once are unaccounted for.
