Working Paper: NBER ID: w16463
Authors: Ofer Malamud; Abigail K. Wozniak
Abstract: We examine whether higher education is a causal determinant of geographic mobility using variation in college attainment induced by draft-avoidance behavior during the Vietnam War. We use national and state-level induction risk to identify both educational attainment and veteran status among cohorts of affected men observed in the 1980 Census. Our 2SLS estimates imply that the additional years of higher education significantly increased the likelihood that affected men resided outside their birth states later in life. Most estimates suggest a causal impact of higher education on migration that is larger in magnitude but not significantly different from OLS. Our large reduced-form estimates for the effect of induction risk on out-of-state migration also imply that the Vietnam War led to substantial geographic churning in the national labor market. We conclude that the causal impact of college completion on subsequent mobility is large and provide evidence on a range of mechanisms that may be responsible for the relationship between college education and mobility.
Keywords: higher education; geographic mobility; Vietnam draft risk
JEL Codes: I23; J24; J61
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| higher education (I23) | geographic mobility (J61) |
| Vietnam War (H56) | geographic mobility (J61) |
| higher education (I23) | migration experience (F22) |
| higher education (I23) | exposure to diverse peers (I24) |