Study: Teen acne translates to success in the future

It’s an age-old problem for the young: How do you cope with acne on the often bumpy road to adulthood?

A Ball State University professor offers a new answer, and a glimmer of hope, as he draws a possible parallel between struggles with teenage acne and higher levels of educational achievement and higher earnings.

In a study to be published in the Journal of Human Capital, economics professor Erik Nesson provides what he sees as a comforting sense of reassurance that problems for pimple-prone teens may clear up in the long run as they secure success.

Could this mean fewer teen suicides?

Having acne is strongly connected to depression and suicidal thoughts among teens, the study notes, so knowing the “long-term benefits associated with having had acne has the potential to reduce teen suicides.”

The finding at the core of the study, titled “Do Pimples Pay? Acne, Human Capital, and the Labor Market,” comes down to a simple equation. Kids battling acne tend to feel less socially accepted and participate less in sports clubs and more in non-sports clubs, which hints at “a possible shift from physical to intellectual pursuits.”

Rather than push themselves socially, teens with acne may feel compelled to focus more on their studies, which may elevate their educational attainment.

Women may also go on to reap higher earnings, according to the first-of-itskind study — according to Nesson.

Studying students in stages

Nesson and his co-author, Emory University professor Hugo Mialon, studied data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health. The pair examined adolescents with and without acne, what activities they filled their time with during their school years as well as their cumulative grades, higher education path, career track and labor market earnings once they matured into adults.

The data set, which Nesson said is a fairly common one that economists and other researchers investigating the same sorts of question use, dates back to the 1994-95 school year and included students who were interviewed beginning when they were in late middle school to early high school.

The set extended to include details about those same students later in life – from high school years past graduation and into their lives as adults.

The professors evaluated the data through regression analysis, which allowed them to look at the relationship between acne and other outcomes while controlling for many other factors that they suspected would affect those outcomes, said Nesson, adding he was “lucky” to dodge major acne problems through his childhood and teen years.

With this method, it’s possible to take two students who share a lot of similarities but are distinctly different in that one has acne and the other doesn’t, and then compare the differences and outcomes between the two, Nesson said.

On average, he explained, the results show a student with acne will have higher grades than a student who does not, though that’s not to say that all students who have had acne are going to have higher grades.

The two researchers have been interested in pop economics topics, those that are “a little bit off the beaten path,” Nesson said, noting that they were also familiar with an area of economics centered on investigating the link between physical appearance and education and labor market outcomes.

“And we thought that acne was a good vehicle for investigating this relationship because a lot of people get acne and it happens to everyone regardless of their socioeconomic status,” Nesson said, whereas other elements of physical appearance, such as weight, can be tied to socioeconomic status.

He also pointed to the fact that acne often strikes during people’s formative years when they’re in the midst of making decisions about their education that might affect their long-range outcomes.

As students are studying in late middle school and high school and starting to make decisions that will influence whether they attend college and what kind of job they will score, “you get this negative shock to your appearance,” Nesson said.

That could affect their decisions about how much time they’re sinking into school vs. being social with their peers, he said.

Why does this study matter?

None of what the authors determined is 100 percent conclusive.

“We’re hesitant to say that we find iron-clad proof,” Nesson said, though they’re pretty confident their research holds up.

The two controlled for several other variables, such as age, gender, race, ethnicity, parents’ education levels, being born in the United States, and the school attended.

However, there is the possibility that certain scenarios that could have interfered with the researchers’ findings. One example: individuals who are very driven could be very careful to wash their face often and could also be the kind of student who is likely to thrive in school because they have more selfcontrol.

The researchers are “always worried that there’s some other factor that we’re not controlling for,” Nesson said.

Knoxville dermatologist is skeptical

Kimberly Grande is a founding partner of The Skin Wellness Center in Knoxville and consults a lot of teens dealing with acne. She hasn’t reviewed Nesson and Mialon’s study but is skeptical of some of the findings.

She sees their report resulting in deductions — but not scientific proof.

Grande agrees that plenty of studies support that even minor acne will take a toll on self-esteem, which can spiral into depression and even suicide. Those suffering with clinical depression, regardless of the cause, find it very difficult to concentrate and get a good night’s rest and be collected enough to perform well academically, which would contradict the study.

Additionally, the dermatologist said it’s not realistic to draw correlations between acne and academic achievement, with many other variables that come into play, like work ethic and home life.

“There’s so many variables to predict the academic outcome of the child,” Grande said.

Nesson responded that he understands depression can complicate a student’s ability to excel in school, but he the relationship between acne and grades was observed among students who were not depressed.

He pointed to the finding that students with acne are likely to have lower self-esteem and are more likely to be involved in non-sports activities and in the long run achieve higher grades.