Income is usually the largest factor affecting personal finances, other than inheritance. If you're earning $350,000 a year, the problems life throws at you will be entirely different from those affecting workers in lower-paid professions. That's obvious.

But what other factors affect success? In many places, the bed you were born in has been legislatively ruled out of contention in this regard. In Bermuda, however, it can be a primary factor.

Some job categories, for example, are only open to Bermudians. They tend to be less well-paid jobs, with the exception of those of politicians and civil servants.

Speaking of politicians, they often believe that inequalities in the workplace can be ruled out by law. Thus in Bermuda, race and sex cannot be used as criteria for offering or denying someone a job, although, shamefully, sexual preference is not covered by Bermuda law.

The reality is that whatever laws may be passed, your income will be largely dictated by subtler factors than the colour of your skin or hormonal make-up. These factors are legion.

Here is a baker's dozen:

1 Height: Fact - The taller you are, the more money you will earn. In "The Tall Book", author Arianne Cohen has calculated that "tall people bring home a lot more bacon than short people, to the tune of $789 more per inch per year". Need more proof? Ms Cohen writes that just two percent of Americans are taller than 6' 3", yet among the chief executives of the 50 largest US corporations, 29 percent exceed that height. (We'll ignore the obvious statistical error, since 29 percent of 50 is 14.5 CEOs.)

2 Weight: Making jokes about the overweight is the one remaining area of comedy that the need for diversity has yet to defeat. Survey after survey reveals that the heavy are discriminated against in job hiring, promotions and every other aspect of corporate life. Watch stand-up comedians on TV if you doubt that: fat jokes are rife. The same jokes based on race, say, would probably cause riots.

3 Parents: Hardly anyone would defend nepotism, yet the worlds of business and politics are chock full of examples of fathers handing jobs and offices down to their sons (and, occasionally, their daughters). This one's rather handy for the modern no-responsibility crowd: "I didn't get the job because he gave it to his son."

4 Education: Education is the largest single income-booster. Well-educated equals better-paid. No one doubts that and, if I may venture a rare personal opinion, nor should they. Doctors take a dozen years to train; they then save lives. Why shouldn't they earn more than journalists?

5 Appearance: Let's start with an extreme. No one other than a circus would hire the Elephant Man. Good-looking people sail through life by comparison to the rest of us. The only thing that keeps us going is that the better looking a person is, generally speaking, the dimmer that person seems to be. (If you're a good-looking genius, don't bother to write in. Everyone already hates you.)

6 Dress: "Clothes make the man," said Mark Twain, adding: "Naked people have little or no influence on society." The truth is that a well-dressed man or woman is far likelier to succeed in life. That's why we wear our best clothes for a job interview or a hot date. This prejudice is extraordinarily powerful. Dress for success.

7 Piercing: Do you have a visible piercing (other than ladies' ears)? Forty percent of Americans aged 26 to 40 have a visible tattoo, and it's not hard to imagine them finding some types of work more difficult to come by as a result. It's equally hard to criticise an employer who discriminates against the visibly pierced or tattooed, since it's such a blatant indicator of low self-esteem. I'll happily accept mail from anyone who'd like to disprove that theory, and I must point out that one of the most successful Bermudians, Colonel Burch, wears earrings in what I would imagine are pierced ears. He'd be hard-pressed to find corporate work, though.

8. Accent: Many Bermudians have two accents: Bermudian and a rather posher English accent. Like Hollywood stars pretending to be English onscreen, there's always a giveaway: among many, it's the way they pronounce "ants" and "aunts". Oddly, those with BBC English are taken less seriously in England these days, but only by the BBC and other people who don't matter. (Ooo, provocative.)

9 Hair: In the 1970s, men with visible ears couldn't find work because long hair was all the rage. Today, the reverse applies. Weird men with ponytails limit themselves to certain kinds of jobs, and that's all I have to say on that subject, except this: to maximise your corporate income, keep your hair clean, tidy and short, if you're a man. It would require a m-u-c-h braver man than I to talk about women's hair.

10 Politics: A simple rule on discussing politics, especially in Bermuda: don't. And if I'm in the room, please don't. It's the dullest subject in the world, especially now that Bermuda has a one-party system.

11 Chemistry: Few admit it, but I'd bet that the largest single factor in hiring is the chemistry between the interviewer, as the representative of the corporate culture, and the candidate. I earned my final position in the corporate world, apparently, because I sat upright in the chair, whereas my only real rival had sat back. "That showed me you were interested," the interviewer said, after giving me the job. I had a bad back at the time, and so had to sit up straight, which leads us to:

12 Luck: "I'd rather be lucky than good," a Bermuda CEO told me recently. How right he was, although being good at your job surely helps.

13 Religion: I've kept this one until last, because it's my favourite. It proves that no amount of laws or socialism will ever change anything. Jewish people make up 0.2 percent of the world's population, but 54 percent of world chess champions, 31 percent of Nobel medicine laureates and 27 percent of physics laureates. They make up two percent of the US population, but 21 percent of Ivy League students, 26 percent of Kennedy Centre honorees, 37 percent of Academy Award-winning directors and 51 percent of Pulitzer Prize winners for non-fiction. No one definitively knows why.