IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/3492.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Effect of Veterans Benefits on Veterans' Education and Earnings

Author

Listed:
  • Joshua D. Angrist

Abstract

The majority of armed forces veterans make use of the subsidized training and educational benefits provided by the Department of Veterans Affairs. The effect of veterans benefits on educational attainment am civilian earnings is estimated here using the Census Bureau's 1987 Survey of Veterans. Two identification strategies are employed to control for unobserved characteristics that are correlated with educational attainment and benefit usage. First, a fixed effects strategy is implemented by exploiting information on educational attainment at the time of entry to service. Second, instrumental variables estimates are computed, where the excluded instruments are interactions between period of service am educational attainment at entry to service. The effect of veterans benefits on earnings is estimated by decomposing the return to education into a return to the grade completed at entry to service and a return to the post-entry grade increment. Veterans benefits are estimated to increase schooling by roughly 1.4 years and the grade increment is worth roughly 4.3 percent, so that veterans benefits raise annual earnings by approximately 6 percent. This premium appears to accrue primarily to the 77 percent of benefit users who attended college or graduate school.

Suggested Citation

  • Joshua D. Angrist, 1990. "The Effect of Veterans Benefits on Veterans' Education and Earnings," NBER Working Papers 3492, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:3492
    Note: LS
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w3492.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Card, David & Krueger, Alan B, 1992. "Does School Quality Matter? Returns to Education and the Characteristics of Public Schools in the United States," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 100(1), pages 1-40, February.
    2. Stephen L. Mangum & David E. Ball, 1989. "The Transferability of Military-Provided Occupational Training in the Post-Draft Era," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 42(2), pages 230-245, January.
    3. Joshua Angrist & Alan Krueger, 1989. "Why Do World War II Veterans Earn More Than Nonveterans?," Working Papers 634, Princeton University, Department of Economics, Industrial Relations Section..
    4. David Card & Alan Krueger, 1990. "Does School Quality Matter? Returns to Education and the Characteristics of Public Schools in the United States," Working Papers 645, Princeton University, Department of Economics, Industrial Relations Section..
    5. Angrist, Joshua & Krueger, Alan B, 1994. "Why Do World War II Veterans Earn More Than Nonveterans?," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 12(1), pages 74-97, January.
    6. repec:fth:prinin:254 is not listed on IDEAS
    7. Heckman, James J. & Robb, Richard Jr., 1985. "Alternative methods for evaluating the impact of interventions : An overview," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 30(1-2), pages 239-267.
    8. repec:fth:prinin:265 is not listed on IDEAS
    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. Jacob L. Vigdor, 2004. "Liquidity Constraints and Housing Prices: Theory and Evidence from the VA Mortgage," NBER Working Papers 10611, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. John Bound & Sarah Turner, 2002. "Going to War and Going to College: Did World War II and the G.I. Bill Increase Educational Attainment for Returning Veterans?," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 20(4), pages 784-815, October.
    3. Gruber, J., 1992. "The Efficiency of a Group-Specific Mandated Benefit: Evidence from Health Insurance Benefits for Maternity," Working papers 92-19, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Department of Economics.

    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. Claudia Goldin & Robert A. Margo, 1992. "The Great Compression: The Wage Structure in the United States at Mid-Century," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 107(1), pages 1-34.
    2. Daren, Conrad, 2007. "Education and Economic Growth: Is There a Link?," MPRA Paper 18176, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 2009.
    3. Gordon B. Dahl, 2002. "Mobility and the Return to Education: Testing a Roy Model with Multiple Markets," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 70(6), pages 2367-2420, November.
    4. Grenet, Julien & Hart, Robert A. & Roberts, J. Elizabeth, 2011. "Above and beyond the call. Long-term real earnings effects of British male military conscription in the post-war years," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 18(2), pages 194-204, April.
    5. Altonji, Joseph G, 1993. "The Demand for and Return to Education When Education Outcomes Are Uncertain," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 11(1), pages 48-83, January.
    6. Paul Heaton, 2008. "Childhood Educational Disruption and Later Life Outcomes: Evidence from Prince Edward County," Journal of Human Capital, University of Chicago Press, vol. 2(2), pages 154-187.
    7. Peter Hull & Michal Kolesár & Christopher Walters, 2022. "Labor by design: contributions of David Card, Joshua Angrist, and Guido Imbens," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 124(3), pages 603-645, July.
    8. Behrman, Jere R., 1996. "Measuring the effectiveness of schooling policies in developing countries: Revisiting issues of methodology," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 15(4), pages 345-364, October.
    9. Lyk-Jensen, Stéphanie Vincent & Weatherall, Cecilie Dohlmann & Jepsen, Peter Winning, 2016. "The effect of military deployment on mental health," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 23(C), pages 193-208.
    10. Carlos Alberto GÓMEZ SILVA, 2014. "Clasificación de colegios según las Pruebas SABER 11 del ICFES en el Período 2001-2011: un Análisis Longitudinal a Través del Uso de Modelos Marginales (MM)," Archivos de Economía 12314, Departamento Nacional de Planeación.
    11. Gabriel, Stuart A. & Mattey, Joe P. & Wascher, William L., 2003. "Compensating differentials and evolution in the quality-of-life among U.S. states," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 33(5), pages 619-649, September.
    12. David Card & Alan B. Krueger, 1992. "School Quality and Black-White Relative Earnings: A Direct Assessment," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 107(1), pages 151-200.
    13. Robles, Adrian & Robles, Marcos, 2016. "Changes in Welfare with a Heterogeneous Workforce: The Case of Peru," IDB Publications (Working Papers) 7507, Inter-American Development Bank.
    14. Xin Meng & Robert G Gregory, "undated". "Impact of Interupted Education on Earnings: The Educational Cost of the Chinese Cultural revolution," Canadian International Labour Network Working Papers 40, McMaster University.
    15. James J. Heckman & Dimitriy V. Masterov, 2007. "The Productivity Argument for Investing in Young Children ," Review of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 29(3), pages 446-493.
    16. Joshua D. Angrist & William N. Evans, 1996. "Schooling and Labor Market Consequences of the 1970 State Abortion Reforms," NBER Working Papers 5406, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    17. Lipovská Hana, 2019. "Alan Krueger: Worker in the Vineyard of Economics," Central European Journal of Public Policy, Sciendo, vol. 13(1), pages 46-49, June.
    18. Bonilla-Mejía, Leonardo, 2014. "Doble jornada escolar y calidad de la educación en Colombia," Chapters, in: Sánchez Jabba, Andrés & Otero Cortés, Andrea (ed.), Educación y desarrollo regional en Colombia, chapter 1, pages 3-56, Banco de la Republica de Colombia.
    19. Donohue, John J, III & Heckman, James, 1991. "Continuous versus Episodic Change: The Impact of Civil Rights Policy on the Economic Status of Blacks," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 29(4), pages 1603-1643, December.
    20. Masci, Chiara & Ieva, Francesca & Agasisti, Tommaso & Paganoni, Anna Maria, 2016. "Does class matter more than school? Evidence from a multilevel statistical analysis on Italian junior secondary school students," Socio-Economic Planning Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 54(C), pages 47-57.

    More about this item

    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:nbr:nberwo:3492. 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.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.