Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/280777 
Year of Publication: 
2023
Series/Report no.: 
Working Paper No. 441
Publisher: 
University of Zurich, Department of Economics, Zurich
Abstract: 
Do veterans earn less? During WW I, the US organized "the greatest human lottery in history": a random draft of 24 million men. Ultimately, 2.8 million Americans were selected to join the armed forces. We sample 10% of registrants of the 1917 lottery and match these men with the 1930 and 1940 US Federal Censuses. Low lottery numbers significantly increased the likelihood of serving in World War I. Importantly, military service also had a positive causal effect on earnings and occupational outcomes. Veterans joined professions with higher cognitive skill requirements, including higher intelligence, language, reasoning, and math requirements. Randomly-assigned military service had fundamentally different effects during World War I than in Vietnam. We rationalize this finding by analyzing complier characteristics.
Subjects: 
Veterans' income
lottery
IV
effect of war participation
JEL: 
N42
J45
I23
J24
N32
Persistent Identifier of the first edition: 
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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