| Title |
War and Marriage: Assortative Mating and the World War II GI Bill
|
|---|---|
| Published in |
Demography, October 2015
|
| DOI | 10.1007/s13524-015-0426-x |
| Pubmed ID | |
| Authors |
Matthew F. Larsen, T. J. McCarthy, Jeremy G. Moulton, Marianne E. Page, Ankur J. Patel |
| Abstract |
World War II and its subsequent GI Bill have been widely credited with playing a transformative role in American society, but there have been few quantitative analyses of these historical events' broad social effects. We exploit between-cohort variation in the probability of military service to investigate how WWII and the GI Bill altered the structure of marriage, and find that it had important spillover effects beyond its direct effect on men's educational attainment. Our results suggest that the additional education received by returning veterans caused them to "sort" into wives with significantly higher levels of education. This suggests an important mechanism by which socioeconomic status may be passed on to the next generation. |
Mendeley readers
The data shown below were compiled from readership statistics for 56 Mendeley readers of this research output. Click here to see the associated Mendeley record.
Geographical breakdown
| Country | Count | As % |
|---|---|---|
| United Kingdom | 1 | 2% |
| Croatia | 1 | 2% |
| United States | 1 | 2% |
| Unknown | 53 | 95% |
Demographic breakdown
| Readers by professional status | Count | As % |
|---|---|---|
| Student > Ph. D. Student | 13 | 23% |
| Researcher | 8 | 14% |
| Student > Doctoral Student | 7 | 13% |
| Professor | 5 | 9% |
| Student > Bachelor | 4 | 7% |
| Other | 8 | 14% |
| Unknown | 11 | 20% |
| Readers by discipline | Count | As % |
|---|---|---|
| Economics, Econometrics and Finance | 15 | 27% |
| Social Sciences | 15 | 27% |
| Arts and Humanities | 4 | 7% |
| Psychology | 3 | 5% |
| Agricultural and Biological Sciences | 2 | 4% |
| Other | 4 | 7% |
| Unknown | 13 | 23% |