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Title: War and Marriage: Assortative Mating and the World War II G.I. Bill

Citation Type: Miscellaneous

Publication Year: 2010

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Abstract: This paper has two objectives: first, we investigate how the World War II G.I. Bill, and the experience of serving during WWII, altered the structure of marriage. In doing so, we hope to shed light on how WWII affected an important dimension of American society. Second, we exploit between cohort variation in the probability of military service and GI Bill benefit eligibility to motivate instruments that are used to identify the effect of mens educational attainment on the probability of marrying and spousal quality. An advantage of this identification strategy is that, relative to most existing studies that speak to the causal role of education in assortative mating, the genesis of our identifying variation is transparent. We find preliminary evidence that WWII and the GI Bill had important spillover effects beyond their direct effect on mens educational attainment. One interpretation of our preliminary estimates is that each additional year of education received by returning veterans allowed them to sort into wives with comparably higher levels of education. The implied instrumental variables estimates are close to one. These findings add to the mounting evidence that the benefits of additional education extend well beyond educations effect on earnings, and suggest an important mechanism through which socioeconomic status may be passed on to the next generation.

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Authors: Page, Marianne E.; Larsen, Matthew; Patel, Ankur; Moulton, Jeremy; McCarthy, T.J.

Publisher: University of California, Davis

Data Collections: IPUMS USA

Topics: Education, Family and Marriage

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