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Title: Fatherless: The Long-Term Effects of Losing a Father in the U.S. Civil War

Citation Type: Miscellaneous

Publication Year: 2019

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Abstract: We estimate the causal effect of losing a father in the U.S. Civil War on children's long-run socioeconomic outcomes. Linking military records from the 2.2 million Union Army soldiers with the 1860 U.S. population Census, we track soldiers' sons into adulthood. Sons of soldiers who died had a lower a occupational income score in 1880 and were less likely to have a high-or semiskilled job as opposed to being low-skilled or farmers. Our results are robust to instrumenting paternal death with the mortality rate of the father's regiment. Effects are largely driven by the increased downward mobility of the sons of semiskilled fathers, who were more likely to become low-skilled as a result of paternal death. Prewar family wealth is a strong mitigating factor: there is no effect of losing a father in the top quartile of the wealth distribution.

Url: https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/staff/ydupraz/DUPRAZ_FERRARA_FATHERLESS.pdf

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Authors: Dupraz, Yannick; Ferrara, Andreas

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Data Collections: IPUMS USA

Topics: Family and Marriage

Countries: United States