Who Benefited from World War II Service and the GI Bill? New Evidence on Heterogeneous Effects for US Veterans

We study the impacts of WWII service and access to GI Bill benefits on the educational and labor market outcomes of individuals of various ethnic and racial groups. We address selection into military service directly by linking veterans and nonveterans from 1950’s census records to the complete-count 1940 census. We find that veterans were positively selected on the basis of education, and neutrally or negatively selected on the basis of their own or their fathers’ labor market characteristics. We show that selection can be dramatically reduced by using 1940 controls. Controlling for these characteristics, we find modest positive impacts in 1950 of WWII service and the GI Bill on educational attainment of those with the least pre-war education, and on the school attendance of those with the most pre-war education, with no effect evident for college completion. These effects are relatively large for black men. We find mixed effects on labor market outcomes: young veterans enjoyed slight gains in income and occupational status; older veterans did not. We do not find systematic racial or ethnic differences in labor market impacts. These findings are important given the continued salience of the GI Bill and its potentially disparate outcomes in political discourse.