Full Citation
Title: The Educational Legacy of the Greatest Generation: Paternal Military Service and Baby Boomer Educational Progress
Citation Type: Working Paper
Publication Year: 2013
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Abstract: The American "high school movement" of the early 20th century resulted in a dramatic rise in high school graduation rates, a trend that continued into the middle of the century interrupted only by World War II. Previous work has characterized the pre-World War II transformation of secondary education, but less attention has been focused on the continued increased in educational attainment after the War, culminating in Baby Boomer children graduating from high school at a greater rate than any previous generation. High rates of military service and subsequent subsidies for factors shown to be associated with children's educational attainment offer a possible explanation. In this paper, I link Baby Boomer children to their fathers using IPUMS data to examine this relationship. Through linear regression and propensity score matching, I find that father's veteran status is associated with greater educational attainment for children. Exploiting discontinuities in military service, I further examine the exogenous effect of military service and GI Bill subsidies rather than positive selection into military service.
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Authors: Kimbrough, Gray
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Publication Number: 13-16
Institution: University of North Carolina Greensboro
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Publisher Location: Greensboro, NC
Data Collections: IPUMS USA
Topics: Education, Family and Marriage, Other
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