09/03/2024

What We Can Learn from Millions of Yearbook Photos

Seeing how styles evolve in different regions

Imagine you're about to get your high school yearbook picture taken and you really want to stand out. What would you wear to distinguish yourself from your classmates? Would bright pink lipstick, a cartoon print tie or a blue steel pout do the trick? Perhaps all of those things in combination?

Economists can now answer this question using AI – and not only for you, but for every single person who graduated high school between 1930 and 2010.

In a recent paper titled "Image(s)," economists Hans-Joachim Voth and David Yanagizawa-Drott analyzed 14.5 million high school yearbook photos from all over the U.S. Their AI tool categorized each photo based on what people were wearing in it, like “suit," necklace" or "glasses." The researchers then used the AI outputs to analyze how fashion had changed over time.

Please select this link to read the complete article from NPR.