Collateral damage: Educational attainment and labor market outcomes among German war and post-war cohorts

Hendrik Jürges ()
Additional contact information
Hendrik Jürges: Schumpeter School of Business and Economics, University of Wuppertal
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Hendrik Juerges

No sdp12003, Schumpeter Discussion Papers from Universitätsbibliothek Wuppertal, University Library

Abstract: We use data from the West German 1970 census to explore the link between being born during or shortly after World War II and educational and labor market outcomes 25 years later. We document, for the first time, that men and women born in the relatively short period between November 1945 and May 1946 have significantly and substantially lower educational attainment and occupational status than cohorts born shortly before or after. Several alternative explanations for this new finding are put to test. Most likely, a short but severe spell of quantitative and qualitative malnutrition immediately around the end of the war has impaired intrauterine conditions in first trimester pregnancies and resulted in longterm detriments among the affected cohorts. This conjecture is corroborated by evidence from Austria.

Keywords: fetal origins hypothesis; malnutrition; educational attainment; labor market outcomes (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J24 N34 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 51
Date: 2012-02
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://elekpub.bib.uni-wuppertal.de/ubwhsmig/down ... riginalFilename=true (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Collateral damage: Educational attainment and labor market outcomes among German war and post-war cohorts (2012)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bwu:schdps:sdp12003

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Schumpeter Discussion Papers from Universitätsbibliothek Wuppertal, University Library
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Frank Hoffmann ().