Un-Fortunate Sons: Effects of the Vietnam Draft Lottery on the Next Generation's Labor Market

Abstract

A b s t r a c tCan shocks to one generation propagate to the next? To answer this question, we study how the Vietnam draft lottery affected the next generation's labor market. Using the universe of U.S. federal tax returns, we link fathers from draft cohorts to their sons' outcomes and find that sons of fathers randomly called by the draft 1) have lower earnings and labor force participation than their peers, and 2) are more likely to volunteer for military service. These findings highlight the strong role family plays in human capital development and occupational choice. More generally, our results provide sound evidence that malleable aspects of a parent's life course can influence children's labor market outcomes and that policies that only directly alter the circumstances of one generation can have important long-run effects on the next.

The Intergenerational Effects of the Vietnam Draft on Risky Behaviors

“…37 Fourth, we only observed the exact date of birth for fathers that reside with the respondent in 1997, which limits our ability to determine who is part of our main sample. 38 That said, and Goodman and Isen (2019) find no difference in marriage rates between draft-and non-draft-eligible men when they were sampled in their respective studies around the late 90's and the 2000 census (close to when the NLSY97 parents were interviewed in 1997). Also, Angrist and Chen (2008) and Conley and Heerwig (2011) find no evidence of an impact of Vietnam-era military service on veteran's mortality.…”

“…Chalfin and Deza (2015a,b) exploit variation induced by changes in compulsory schooling laws in the United States and the household survey nature of the NLSY79 to study the effect of parental education on risky behaviors and find that increasing parental education reduces delinquent behaviors and substance use among children. 14 More specifically, Goodman and Isen (2019) find that father's draft eligibility negatively affected son's earnings and labor force participation, and increased the probability of enlisting in the military. Relatedly, Campante and Yanagizawa-Drott (2015), by pooling information on war service in World War I, World War II, Korean and Vietnam wars, find that father's war service increased the probability of son's military service in times of war, but decreased military service outside of wartime.…”

“…12 Our study contributes to three bodies of literature. First, we contribute to the literature on identification of causal intergenerational effects of shocks and policies (e.g., Black et al 2019, Oreopoulos et al 2018, Cesarini et al 2016 In this particular strand, we add to the nascent literature on the intergenerational effects of the Vietnam draft, which to date has mostly concentrated on estimating the effects on military service and labor market outcomes (Goodman and Isen, 2019;Johnson and Dawes, 2016). 14 Our study focuses on the effects of draft eligibility on children's outcomes among cohorts that were born after the Vietnam War was over (1980)(1981)(1982)(1983)(1984), which allows us to estimate the effect of long-term household circumstances isolated from the potential effects of fathers being absent while serving in the military.…”

“…Most importantly, today's military service is based on volunteering. Men who volunteer to serve could be different 16 An exception is Goodman and Isen (2019), who exploit incarceration data that the IRS receives on the incarcerated population, and find that sons of draft-eligible fathers are more likely to have been in prison as young adults. Thus, our results that children from draft-eligible fathers are more likely to engage in risky behaviors during adolescence might translate into more chances of spending time in prison as young adults.…”

“…Thus, our results that children from draft-eligible fathers are more likely to engage in risky behaviors during adolescence might translate into more chances of spending time in prison as young adults. Additionally, exploiting the Kidlink dataset, Goodman and Isen (2019) find that sons of draft-eligible fathers are also more likely to have children as teenagers. 17 Goodman and Isen (2019) also explore mechanisms behind the earnings and labor force participation differentials they document.…”