Going to War and Going to College: Did World War II and the G.I. Bill Increase Educational Attainment for Returning Veterans?

John Bound and Sarah Turner

No 7452, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: The end of World War II brought a flood of returning veterans to America's colleges and universities. Yet, despite widespread rhetoric about the democratization' of higher education that came with this large pool of students, there is little evidence about the question of whether military service, combined with the availability of post-war educational benefits, led these men to increase their investments in education - particularly at the college and university level. This paper uses the structure of the draft during the World War II period and the changing manpower requirements in the armed forces to address the effects of selection in comparisons of the educational attainment of veterans and nonveterans in this era. Using census data, our results indicate that the net effects of military service and the widely available funding for college through the G.I. Bill led to a moderate gain in the postsecondary educational attainment of World War II veterans.

JEL-codes: I2 J24 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1999-12
Note: LS
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

Published as Bound, John and Sarah Turner. "Going To War And Going To College: Did World War II And The G.I. Bill Increase Education Attainment For Returning Veterans?," Journal of Labor Economics, 2002, v20(4,Oct), 784-815.

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w7452.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Going to War and Going to College: Did World War II and the G.I. Bill Increase Educational Attainment for Returning Veterans? (2002)
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:7452

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w7452

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 ().