Advanced Search
MyIDEAS: Login

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

Contents:

Author Info

  • Malamud, Ofer

    () (University of Chicago)

  • Wozniak, Abigail

    () (University of Notre Dame)

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.

Download Info

If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the proper application to view it first. In case of further problems read the IDEAS help page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
File URL: http://ftp.iza.org/dp3432.pdf
Download Restriction: no

Bibliographic Info

Paper provided by Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) in its series IZA Discussion Papers with number 3432.

as in new window
Length: 64 pages
Date of creation: Apr 2008
Date of revision:
Handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp3432

Contact details of provider:
Postal: IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany
Phone: +49 228 3894 223
Fax: +49 228 3894 180
Web page: http://www.iza.org

Order Information:
Postal: IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany
Email:

Related research

Keywords: geographic mobility; education; college graduates; internal migration; instrumental variables;

Other versions of this item:

Find related papers by JEL classification:

This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

References

References listed on IDEAS
Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
as in new window
  1. Wozniak, Abigail, 2006. "Educational Differences in the Migration Responses of Young Workers to Local Labor Market Conditions," IZA Discussion Papers 1954, Institute for the Study of Labor (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 in new window

Cited by:
  1. Gallo, Fredrik, 2006. "Resisting Economic Integration when Industry Location is Uncertain," Working Papers 2006:22, Lund University, Department of Economics.
  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," IZA Discussion Papers 5572, Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA).
  3. Peter McHenry, 2012. "The Relationship between Location Choice and Earnings Inequality," Working Papers 118, 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, 04.
  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. Brad J. Hershbein, 2013. "Worker Signals among New College Graduates: The Role of Selectivity and GPA," Upjohn Working Papers and Journal Articles 13-190, W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research.
  8. Peter McHenry, 2010. "The Geographic Distribution of Human Capital: Measurement of Contributing Mechanisms," Working Papers 92, Department of Economics, College of William and Mary.

Lists

This item is not listed on Wikipedia, on a reading list or among the top items on IDEAS.

Statistics

Access and download statistics

Corrections

When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp3432

For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Mark Fallak).

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 references are entirely missing, you can add them using this form.

If the full references list an item that is present in RePEc, but the system did not link 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 profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

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