TV personality Kim Kardashian, right, and her then-fiance, NBA basketball player Kris Humphries, arrive at the Kardashian Kollection launch party on Aug. 17, 2011 in Los Angeles. While Humphries's height may have made him more attractive to her, their marriage did not last. (Matt Sayles/AP) 
 
 There is already a growing body of research suggesting that tall men are generally paid better and are viewed as more masculine and competent. A new paper suggests that their height advantage also spills over into their personal lives. 
 
 “There seems to be an almost universal agreement among men and women that they would prefer to be in a relationship where the man is taller,” said Abigail Weitzman, lead author of the study published this month by the National Bureau of Economic Research, a nonprofit organization that focuses on how the economy works. 
 
 That leaves short men with a smaller pool of women to date and marry. But it’s not all bad news for them. Their relationships tend to last longer, although that may have more to do with their partners’ choices. 
 
 Shorter guys -- less than 5-foot-7 -- "get divorced at lower rates,” Weitzman noted. “This probably means that women who don't want to be in a relationship with short men are more likely to leave before they get married, rather than after.” 
 
 The study found that tall men -- guys over 6-foot-2 -- marry at higher rates and are more likely to date and wed older, well-educated women. Short men, on the other hand, get married at the lowest rates, and they marry women who are less educated and younger than they are. They also marry women who are closer to their height — or taller. 
 
 The study also examined what happens in the course of these relationships and found --somewhat paradoxically -- that tall men, though they are viewed as more masculine, are more likely to be in egalitarian relationships. They do more housework than shorter men and their income is more likely to be similar to their spouse's. Shorter men have relationships that more closely mirror traditional power dynamics: the man as breadwinner, the woman spending more time on housework. 
 
 “Our findings portray a pattern in which short men compensate for their status disadvantage by enacting other types of stereotypical masculinity,” Weitzman said. 
 
 If tall men have advantages when it comes to desirability, why do they do more housework than shorter men? Weitzman suspects that there could be two explanations. 
 
 “It may just be that housework is less threatening to tall men, that is, if they believe their tallness confers them a certain degree of masculinity,” Weitzman said. On the other hand, short men compensate for the masculinity “perception gap” by displaying other behaviors—such as making more money outside the home and contributing less to housework. 
 
 The other explanation could simply be that the amount of money a man makes relative to his spouse is inversely related to the amount of housework he does. The spouses of short men also tend to be less educated, which could also contribute to that result. ||||| Last year, Ann Friedman called on women everywhere to overthrow “the last acceptable dating prejudice” and give short men a chance. At 6’2”, she can’t restrict her dating pool to taller men, and she’s discovered that short men aren’t—shockingly—that bad: In fact, she writes, if a man is willing to go out with a taller woman, there’s a good chance he’s also secure enough to accept a woman who’s “competitive and outgoing and career-oriented.” 
 
 While Psychology Today kindly offers that women don’t “quite” see short men as “lepers,” Friedman is more accepting than most. When a 5’4” blogger added five inches to his height on his OkCupid profile, his response rate jumped from 16 to 29 percent. In a more methodologically sound experiment, a pair of sociologists found that 48.9 percent of women restricted their online dating searches to men who were taller than them. (Men were less picky: Just 13.5 percent wouldn’t consider a taller woman.) Out of all 925 people, only three left the “desired height” category blank. When the same team took a survey of 181 college students, 29 percent of women said they would feel “awkward” or “weird” dating a shorter guy, and both men and women in this sample were even more exacting about height: More than half of the women—55 percent—said they only wanted to date men who were taller, and 37 percent of men said they would only go out with women who were shorter. 
 
 But a preliminary new study suggests that shorter men might actually make better partners: They do a greater share of housework, earn a greater proportion of household income, and are less likely than their taller peers to get divorced. In a working paper (it has not yet been peer reviewed), Dalton Conley, a sociologist at NYU, and Abigail Weitzman, a Ph.D. candidate, used data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics—a University of Michigan project that’s been collecting demographic data on 5,000 families for almost 50 years—to look at how a man’s height impacts different areas of his relationship after the initial dating period. 
 
 They looked at two sets of data, from 1986 and 2009, and identified 3,033 heterosexual couples. (They restricted their sample to men between the ages of 23 and 45 cohabiting with a woman.) The men ranged in height from 4’6” to 7 feet; their height, in relation to their partners', ranged from nine inches shorter to two feet taller. They categorized the men into three groups: “Short” men were defined as 5’6” or less in 1986, 5’7” or below in 2009; “tall” men were at least 6’1” in 1986 and 6’2” in 2009. ||||| Tall, dark, and handsome is the popular description used to describe the perfect man for most women. From the brooding and sultry looks of Hollywood favorites, like George Clooney and David Beckham, women swoon over these men because of their celebrated physical attractiveness. However, science suggests setting your sights on much shorter, dark and handsome men, like Tom Cruise, because they make better life partners. According to a recent study (not peer reviewed), short men have a higher income and are more likely to stay monogamous, making better boyfriends and husbands, and standing head and shoulders above their much taller peers. 
 
 Short men have been stigmatized in society because of their stature. The cultural vision of taller men as being physically dominant and potential protectors has been embedded into the psyche of many women, creating a “prejudice” against shorter men. It’s unclear whether women prefer this because of society’s pressure for women to be slim or because of an evolutionary perspective. Dr. David Frederick, an assistant professor of Psychology at Chapman University, examines how social remission processes and our evolved psychology interact to influence our close relationships and our views of what is attractive. He has hypothesized women may prefer a taller partner because it can make them feel smaller, or women have developed a preference for taller men because of the advantages height can provide them in male-on-male competitions, The Huffington Post reported. 
 
 To examine the effects of male height on various relationship outcomes in longer-term relationships, researchers Dalton Conley, a sociologist at New York University, and Abigail Weitzman, a Ph.D. candidate, collected data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics — a University of Michigan project that’s been collecting demographic data on 5,000 families for almost 50 years. This data was used to look at how a man’s height impacts different areas of his relationship after the initial dating period. Conley and Weitzman looked at two sets of data, from 1986 and 2009, and identified 3,033 heterosexual couples. The male sample size was restricted between the ages of 23 and 45, and consisted of men who were cohabitating with a woman. 
 
 The male participants ranged in height from 4-foot-6 to 7-feet. In relation to their partners, their height ranged 9 inches shorter to 2 feet taller. The researchers categorized these men into three groups: “Short” men were defined as 5-foot-6 or less in 1986, 5-foot-7 or below in 2009; “tall” men were at least 6-foot-1 in 1986 and 6-foot-2 in 2009. 
 
 The findings revealed short men were less likely to get divorced, more likely to share housework, and be the breadwinners at home. These men were somewhat less likely to get married, with an 18 percent marriage rate lower than men of average height, at every age before 45. Weitzman believes this is because short men may have a harder time getting married, since they’re viewed as less masculine by society. However, when they do find a partner, the divorce rates are 32 percent lower for short men compared to the rates for tall and average men. 
 
 In regard to housework, shorter men perform eight hours and 28 minutes per week of housework — this comprises about 28 percent of the total — compared to seven hours and 38 minutes for average men and seven hours and 30 minutes for tall men, New Republic reported. Weitzman believes tall men may be “aware of the status that is conferred by their tallness,” which may make them prone to do less work at home. While these men fare better with housework, but they also tend to have higher household incomes than their partners. The researchers estimated 79 percent of short men make more money than their significant others, compared to 70 percent of average men, and 71 percent of tall men. This finding conflicts with previous research that has found taller men earn more money. 
 
 Throughout the study, the researchers noticed a consistent pattern with short men and their partners: They were more likely to partner with women who are older, less educated, and younger. Twenty-one percent of these men were with women who had not completed high school, compared to 16 percent of average men, and just 12 percent of tall men. Also, when it comes to age, it is not just a number for them. In the entire sample size, only nine percent of men partnered with a woman who was more than three years older. Age is an area where the short men can exude their masculinity by partnering with a younger woman. 
 
 This study coincides with another recent study published in the Journal of Family Issues, which found women err on the side of caution when it comes to height and online dating. About 50 percent of women restricted their online dating searches to men who were taller than them. This finding was also consistent when the same team of researchers took a survey of college students and found about 30 percent of women would feel “awkward” or “weird” dating a shorter guy. 
 
 Perhaps it’s time to put an end to these men getting the shorter end of the stick. After all, your Mr. Right could be shorter than you. 
 
 Sources: Conley D, Weitzman A. From Assortative to Ashortative Coupling: Men’s Height, Height Heterogamy, and Relationship Dynamics in the United States. NYU Population Center: Working Paper Series. 2014. 
 
 Emerson MO. Yancey G. Does Height Matter? An Examination of Height Preferences in Romantic Coupling. Journal of Family Issues. 2014.
– The short guy doesn't always get the girl, but when he does, he usually gets to keep her. So says a new study in the National Bureau of Economic Research, which found that short guys, defined as those shorter than 5-foot-7, are about 18% less likely to marry than their taller counterparts, but when they do, they divorce at lower rates—to the tune of 32% lower, reports the New Republic. Divorce rates for tall and average guys, meanwhile, are basically the same. "This probably means that women who don't want to be in a relationship with short men are more likely to leave before they get married, rather than after," one researcher tells the Washington Post. Or more simply: "There’s something distinct about the women who marry short men." But it's not quite clear what's distinct, because shorter men appear to be the heavyweights in the relationship: Their partners tend to be younger, less educated women, who earn less than they do. Some 78% of short men out-earn their partners, as opposed to 69% of average and 71% of tall men. (More egalitarian marriages, meanwhile, often involve less sex.)