Effects of Mandatory Military Service on Wages and Other Socioeconomic Outcomes

Patrick Puhani and Margret K. Sterrenberg

No 835, GLO Discussion Paper Series from Global Labor Organization (GLO)

Abstract: In this paper, we estimate the effects of mandatory military service by exploiting the post-cold war decrease in the need for soldiers causing a substantial number of potential conscripts not to be drafted into the German military. Specifically, using previously unavailable information on degree of fitness in the military's medical exam as a control variable, we test for the effects of mandatory military service on wages; employment; marriage/partnership status; and satisfaction with work, financial situation, health, family life, friends, and life in general. We find almost no statistically significant effects of this 6 to 9 month career interruption for young German men, with the exception of hourly wage, which shows a negative point estimate of -15 percent with a large confidence interval of between -30 and -0.2 percent. This interval estimate is consistent with previous findings for the United States, Denmark, and the Netherlands.

Keywords: career breaks; conscription; wages; employment; life satisfaction; natural experiment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J12 J24 J47 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hea
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/233810/1/GLO-DP-0835.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Effects of Mandatory Military Service on Wages and Other Socioeconomic Outcomes (2021)
Working Paper: Effects of Mandatory Military Service on Wages and Other Socioeconomic Outcomes (2021)
Working Paper: Effects of Mandatory Military Service on Wages and Other Socioeconomic Outcomes (2021)
Working Paper: Effects of Mandatory Military Service on Wages and Other Socioeconomic Outcomes (2021)
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:zbw:glodps:835

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in GLO Discussion Paper Series from Global Labor Organization (GLO) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics ().