IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/har/wpaper/0811.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Impact of College Graduation on Geographic Mobility: Identifying Education Using Multiple Components of Vietnam Draft Risk

Author

Listed:
  • Ofer Malamud
  • Abigail Wozniak

Abstract

College-educated workers are twice as likely as high school graduates to make lasting long-distance moves, but little is known about the role of college itself in determining geographic mobility. Unobservable characteristics related to selection into college might also drive the relationship between college education and geographic mobility. We explore this question using a number of methods to analyze both the 1980 Census and longitudinal sources. We conclude that the causal impact of college completion on subsequent mobility is large. We introduce new instrumental variables that allow us to identify educational attainment and veteran status separately in a sample of men whose college decisions were exogenously influenced by their draft risk during the Vietnam War. Our preferred IV estimates imply that graduation increases the probability that a man resides outside his birth state by approximately 35 percentage points, a magnitude nearly twice as large as the OLS migration differential between college and high school graduates. IV estimates of graduation’s impact on total distance moved are even larger, with IV estimates that exceed OLS considerably. We provide evidence from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY) 1979 that our large IV estimates are plausible and likely explained by heterogeneous treatment effects. Finally, we provide some suggestive evidence on the mechanisms driving the relationship between college completion and mobility.

Suggested Citation

  • Ofer Malamud & Abigail Wozniak, 2008. "The Impact of College Graduation on Geographic Mobility: Identifying Education Using Multiple Components of Vietnam Draft Risk," Working Papers 0811, Harris School of Public Policy Studies, University of Chicago.
  • Handle: RePEc:har:wpaper:0811
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://harrisschool.uchicago.edu/about/publications/working-papers/pdf/wp_08_11.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Carmit Segal, 2006. "Motivation, test scores and economic success," Economics Working Papers 1124, Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, revised Oct 2008.
    2. Wozniak, Abigail, 2006. "Educational Differences in the Migration Responses of Young Workers to Local Labor Market Conditions," IZA Discussion Papers 1954, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Gallo, Fredrik, 2010. "Resisting economic integration when industry location is uncertain," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 54(3), pages 467-482, April.
    2. Riddell, W. Craig & Song, Xueda, 2011. "The impact of education on unemployment incidence and re-employment success: Evidence from the U.S. labour market," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 18(4), pages 453-463, August.
    3. Peter McHenry, 2011. "The Relationship between Location Choice and Earnings Inequality," Working Papers 112, Department of Economics, College of William and Mary.
    4. Stephen Machin & Kjell G. Salvanes & Panu Pelkonen, 2012. "Education And Mobility," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 10(2), pages 417-450, April.
    5. Matthew J. Notowidigdo, 2011. "The Incidence of Local Labor Demand Shocks," NBER Working Papers 17167, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    6. Böckerman, Petri & Haapanen, Mika, 2010. "The effect of education on migration: Evidence from school reform," MPRA Paper 27629, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    7. John Kennan & James R. Walker, 2013. "Modeling individual migration decisions," Chapters, in: Amelie F. Constant & Klaus F. Zimmermann (ed.), International Handbook on the Economics of Migration, chapter 2, pages 39-54, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    8. Brad J. Hershbein, 2013. "Worker Signals among New College Graduates: The Role of Selectivity and GPA," Upjohn Working Papers 13-190, W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research.
    9. Abigail Wozniak, 2010. "Are College Graduates More Responsive to Distant Labor Market Opportunities?," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 45(4), pages 944-970.
    10. Peter McHenry, 2014. "The Geographic Distribution Of Human Capital: Measurement Of Contributing Mechanisms," Journal of Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 54(2), pages 215-248, March.
    11. Jennifer M. Mellor & Beth A. Freeborn, 2011. "Religious participation and risky health behaviors among adolescents," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 20(10), pages 1226-1240, October.
    12. Ben Backes & Harry Holzer & Erin Velez, 2015. "Is it worth it? Postsecondary education and labor market outcomes for the disadvantaged," IZA Journal of Labor Policy, Springer;Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit GmbH (IZA), vol. 4(1), pages 1-30, December.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Falch, Torberg & Johansen, Kåre & Strøm, Bjarne, 2009. "Teacher shortages and the business cycle," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 16(6), pages 648-658, December.
    2. Borghans, Lex & Meijers, Huub & ter Weel, Bas, 2013. "The importance of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation for measuring IQ," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 34(C), pages 17-28.
    3. Christoph T. Weiss, 2012. "Persistent Attitudes and Behaviors," "Marco Fanno" Working Papers 0143, Dipartimento di Scienze Economiche "Marco Fanno".
    4. Heckman, James J. & Kautz, Tim, 2012. "Hard evidence on soft skills," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 19(4), pages 451-464.
    5. Lex Borghans & Bas ter Weel & Bruce A. Weinberg, 2008. "Interpersonal Styles and Labor Market Outcomes," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 43(4).
    6. Borghans, L. & Golsteyn, B.H.H., 2007. "Are courses chosen to reduce skill-deficiencies? an experimental approach," ROA Research Memorandum 001, Maastricht University, Research Centre for Education and the Labour Market (ROA).
    7. Aughinbaugh, Alison & Rothstein, Donna S., 2015. "Do cognitive skills moderate the influence of neighborhood disadvantage on subsequent educational attainment?," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 44(C), pages 83-99.
    8. Thomas Dohmen & Armin Falk & David Huffman & Uwe Sunde, 2010. "Are Risk Aversion and Impatience Related to Cognitive Ability?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 100(3), pages 1238-1260, June.
    9. Will Dobbie & Roland G. Fryer, Jr, 2009. "Are High Quality Schools Enough to Close the Achievement Gap? Evidence from a Social Experiment in Harlem," NBER Working Papers 15473, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    10. Pischke, Jorn-Steffen & Schwandt, Hannes, 2012. "A Cautionary Note on Using Industry Affiliation to Predict Income," CEPR Discussion Papers 9131, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    11. Martin Schlotter, 2011. "Age at Preschool Entrance and Noncognitive Skills before School - An Instrumental Variable Approach," ifo Working Paper Series 112, ifo Institute - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich.
    12. Borghans, Lex & Golsteyn, Bart H. H. & Heckman, James & Humphries, John Eric, 2011. "Identification Problems in Personality Psychology," Working Paper Series 5/2011, Stockholm University, Swedish Institute for Social Research.
    13. Kautz, Tim & Heckman, James J. & Diris, Ron & ter Weel, Bas & Borghans, Lex, 2014. "Fostering and Measuring Skills: Improving Cognitive and Non-Cognitive Skills to Promote Lifetime Success," IZA Discussion Papers 8696, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    14. Golsteyn, Bart H.H. & Grönqvist, Hans & Lindahl, Lena, 2013. "Time Preferences and Lifetime Outcomes," IZA Discussion Papers 7165, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    15. Joshua Goodman, 2014. "The Wages of Sinistrality: Handedness, Brain Structure, and Human Capital Accumulation," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 28(4), pages 193-212, Fall.
    16. Flavio Cunha & James J. Heckman, 2009. "The Economics and Psychology of Inequality and Human DEvelopment," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 7(2-3), pages 320-364, 04-05.
    17. Maksim Belitski & Julia Korosteleva & Julia Korosteleva, 2012. "Entrepreneurial Dynamics and Higher Education Institutions: Evidence from the Post-Communist World," UCL SSEES Economics and Business working paper series 120, UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies (SSEES).
    18. Marco Castillo & Paul Ferraro & Jeff Jordan & Ragan Petrie, 2008. "The Today and Tomorrow of Kids," Experimental Economics Center Working Paper Series 2008-10, Experimental Economics Center, Andrew Young School of Policy Studies, Georgia State University.
    19. Mariano Bosch & Angel Melguizo & Ximena Peña & David Tuesta, 2015. "Savings under formal and informal conditions," Working Papers 1519, BBVA Bank, Economic Research Department.
    20. James Heckman & Tim Kautz, 2013. "Fostering and Measuring Skills: Interventions That Improve Character and Cognition," Working Papers 2013-019, Human Capital and Economic Opportunity Working Group.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    geographic mobility; college; higher education; vietnam;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J61 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers - - - Geographic Labor Mobility; Immigrant Workers
    • J24 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Human Capital; Skills; Occupational Choice; Labor Productivity
    • I23 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Higher Education; Research Institutions

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:har:wpaper:0811. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Eleanor Cartelli (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/spuchus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.