Full Citation
Title: Semper Fidelis: On the Material Well-Being of Veterans
Citation Type: Dissertation/Thesis
Publication Year: 2024
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Abstract: The material well-being of veterans and their families is an important, policy-relevant topic. I research this topic through two crucial measures. In Chapters 1 and 2, I focus on wages, and in Chapter 3, I focus on poverty. In Chapter 1, I estimate the effect of veteran status on unconditional quantiles of wages for males across the period 1979-2017. I show there are important changes to the veteran wage differential over time across the entire wage distribution. In earlier periods, veterans enjoyed wage premiums across the entire wage distribution. Beginning in the early 1990s, wage premiums systematically declined across the wage distribution and largely became slight wage penalties across the wage distribution. Starting around 1997 and going forward, a pattern emerged showing that veterans at the low end of the wage distribution experience wage premiums of around 2% to 4%, whereas veterans at the upper end of the wage distribution experience wage penalties of around 4%. I then conduct wage decompositions of these differentials at both the beginning and end of the period of study. The results show that veterans in more recent times have had their wage premiums reduced or are now earning wage penalties compared to nonveterans. The primary reason for this is that more recent veterans have less favorable compositional differences as compared to nonveterans, especially in the upper-end of the wage distribution. Whereas veterans in the past maintained an advantage in characteristics the labor market valued throughout the wage distribution. In Chapter 2, I examine the effect of potential non-random selection into employment on the female veteran-nonveteran median wage gap over the period 2006-2021. I find no evidence iii that selection is contaminating estimates of the female veteran-nonveteran median wage gap over this period. In Chapter 3, I estimate both the effect of veteran status on households’ likelihood of poverty and deep poverty and the effect of service-connected disability on veteran households’ likelihood of poverty and deep poverty. I construct two measures of service-connected disability. First, I construct an indicator for whether a veteran household has any service- connected disability. Next, I construct a categorical measure of the severity of service-connected disability. The latter allows me to test whether service-connected disability has heterogeneous effects depending on its severity. I estimate these effects over the period 2009-2019. The results are consistent with prior literature, indicating that veteran households have a much lower likelihood of poverty as compared to nonveteran households in all periods. Generally, veteran households enjoy a 1.7 to 3.3 percentage point lower likelihood of poverty depending on the year. This advantage does not transfer to the likelihood of deep poverty. Among impoverished households, veteran households generally maintain around a 2 percentage point higher likelihood of being in deep poverty. Veteran households with the presence of service-connected disability have a lower likelihood of poverty by 2 to 2.5 percentage points as compared to veteran households with no service-connected disability, depending on the year. A different pattern emerges for deep poverty. Among impoverished veteran households, those with the presence of service-connected disability have around a 4 percentage point higher likelihood of poverty. This effect is consistent across the period of study. I also find evidence for heterogeneity in the effect of service-connected disability on the likelihood of poverty and deep poverty. There is a strong pattern whereby as the severity of service-connected disability increases, the likelihood of poverty among veteran households declines. The most severe category of service-connected iv disability is associated with a consistent reduction in poverty by around 3 to 4 percentage points (depending on the year) as compared to veteran households with no service-connected disability or a rating of 0%. Veteran households in the second most severe category analogously experience around a 2 to 3 percentage point reduction in poverty. Veteran households in the second lowest severity category analogously experience around a 1 to 2 percentage point reduction in poverty.
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Authors: Fuller, James
Institution: University of North Carolina at Charlotte
Department: Public Policy
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Pages: 1-130
Data Collections: IPUMS USA
Topics: Poverty and Welfare
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