School quality and educational attainment: Japanese American internment as a natural experiment

Martin Saavedra ()

Explorations in Economic History, 2015, vol. 57, issue C, 59-78

Abstract: In 1942, the United States incarcerated all Japanese Americans on the West Coast, including children, in internment camps. Using non-West Coast Japanese Americans and non-Japanese Asians as control groups, I estimate the effect of attending a War Relocation Authority school on educational attainment. Non-linear difference-in-differences estimates suggest that attending school within the internment camps decreased the probability of receiving a post-collegiate education by approximately 4 to 5 percentage points and decreased the probability of receiving a college degree by between 2 and 7 percentage points. I find some evidence that attending a WRA school may have decreased the returns to education as well. By using un-incarcerated birth cohorts and races, placebo tests find no evidence that the identifying assumptions are violated.

Keywords: School quality; Education; Returns to education; Japanese American Internment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I21 J24 N3 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:exehis:v:57:y:2015:i:c:p:59-78

DOI: 10.1016/j.eeh.2015.02.001

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