Do Guns Displace Books? The Impact of Compulsory Military Service on Educational Attainment

Thomas Bauer (), Stefan Bender (), Alfredo Paloyo and Christoph Schmidt

No 5744, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: Compulsory military service typically drafts young men when they are at the height of their learning ability. Thus, it can be expected to depress the demand for higher education since skill atrophy and the delayed entry into the civilian labor market reduce the returns to human-capital investments. Attending university, however, might open the possibility to avoid the draft, leading to an increase in the demand for tertiary education. To estimate the causal effect of conscription on the probability to obtain a university degree, we use a regression-discontinuity design that employs special regulations associated with the introduction of conscription in Germany in 1956. We estimate conscription to increase the probability of having a university degree.

Keywords: career interruption; conscription; regression discontinuity; skill atrophy; TS2SLS (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I28 J24 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 22 pages
Date: 2011-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu, nep-hrm and nep-lab
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Published - published in: Economics Letters, 2014,124 (3), 513–515

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Related works:
Journal Article: Do guns displace books? The impact of compulsory military service on educational attainment (2014)
Working Paper: Do Guns Displace Books? – The Impact of Compulsory Military Service on Educational Attainment (2011)
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