We all know a leftie amongst us, but did you know they might be left out in the cold when it comes to earning a fair salary?
A new study has proven that left-handed peers earn less money than their right-handed counterparts.
Economist Joshua Goodman at Harvard’s Kennedy School has found that lefties, who make up roughly 12% of the population, have a number of economic disadvantages:
“Lefties exhibit economically and statistically significant human capital deficits relative to righties.”
In his study The Wages of Sinistrality: Handedness, Brain Structure, and Human Capital Accumulation, Goodman compiled research across both the UK and US.
Analysing the research, Goodman writes:
“Compared to righties, lefties score a tenth of a standard deviation lower on measures of cognitive skills. Lefties have more emotional and behavioural problems, have more learning difficulties such as dyslexia, complete less schooling, and work in occupations requiring less cognitive skill.”
Overall, Goodman concludes that left-handed people are likely to earn 10pc to 12pc less than right-handers, which he says is roughly the same as having a year’s less schooling.
There is some good news if your left-handedness is genetic though.
You could still earn as much as righties, as according to Goodman, left-handers whose mother was also left handed do not suffer from the differences in cognitive ability with the rest of the population.
So it’s a hard knock life… for us (lefties).
