The War at Home: Effects of Vietnam-Era Military Service on Post-War Household Stability

Dalton Conley and Jennifer Heerwig

No 16671, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: Prior researchers have deployed the Vietnam-era draft lottery as an instrument to estimate causal effects of military service on health and income. This research has shown that effects of veteran status on mortality and earnings that appeared shortly after the war seem to have dissipated by 2000. While these are important outcomes to economists, by focusing on them, researchers may be neglecting an area of life that could be more sensitive to the psychological effects of military service: household and family life. In the present study we use the same IV approach to model the causal impact of Vietnam- era military service on four novel outcomes: residential stability, marital stability, housing tenure and extended family living arrangements. In analysis of the 2000 U.S. Census and the 2005 American Community Survey, we find that veteran status has no effect on housing tenure or residential stability. However, in the ACS sample, being a veteran appears to lower the likelihood of marital disruption, and results for extended family living arrangements appear to change signs across the two samples. Meanwhile, results tend to be strongest for whites.

JEL-codes: H56 J12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011-01
Note: CH LS PE
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (10)

Published as Conley, D. and J. Heerwig. 2011. “The War at Ho me: Effects of Vietnam-Era Military Service on Postwar Household Stability.” : 350–American Economic Review (Papers and Proceedings) . 101: 350-54.

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w16671.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
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:nbr:nberwo:16671

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w16671

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().