How About a Job in Ireland?

I'm catching up on a bunch of sections of the Washington Post I brought with me after running out of time to read the paper in the run-up to the move.

An item in the August 28 "Unconventional Wisdom" column by Richard Morin (Outlook, Page B5) suggests I should be looking for a job in "the beer belt."

A new study done in Europe suggests that fat people earn less than thin folks -- except in those countries were beer is the national beverage of choice.

A number of recent studies in the United States and elsewhere show that workers who are obese are paid less for the same job than their thinner colleagues, all other factors being equal. So Beatrice d'Hombres and Giorgio Brunello of the University of Padua in Italy were surprised when the analyzed data from nine European countries and found an unexpected pattern.

In countries of the "Olive Belt" (Spain, Italy, France, Greece and Portugal), the heavier you were, the less you earned. ... But in Austria, Ireland, Belgium and other countries of northern and central Europe -- which these researches dubbed the "Beer Belt" -- fatter workers collected fatter paychecks.

...

What's so magical about beer in northern climes? Unfortunately, the researchers don't know, they confess in a newly released working paper published by the Institute for the Study of Labor in Bonn. "We speculate that such differences could be driven by the interaction between the weather, BMI [body mass index] and individual unobserved productivity."

The only downside I see to this is that, living in Ireland, I would drink much too much Guiness, which would make me even fatter than I already am. But if the study holds true, getting fat from too much Guiness should lead to another pay increase, which would give me more money to buy more Guiness, which would lead to another pay increase...