title: War and Marriage: Assortative Mating and the World War II GI Bill.
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.
authors.affiliation: Department of Economics, Lafayette College, Easton, PA, USA.
authors.forename: Matthew F
authors.initials: MF
authors.lastname: Larsen
authors.affiliation: Sol Price School of Public Policy, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA.
authors.forename: T J
authors.initials: TJ
authors.lastname: McCarthy
authors.affiliation: Department of Public Policy, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC, USA.
authors.forename: Jeremy G
authors.initials: JG
authors.lastname: Moulton
authors.affiliation: Department of Economics, University of California Davis, Davis, CA, USA. mepage@ucdavis.edu.
authors.forename: Marianne E
authors.initials: ME
authors.lastname: Page
authors.affiliation: U.S. Department of the Treasury, Washington, DC, USA.
authors.forename: Ankur J
authors.initials: AJ
authors.lastname: Patel
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D004522:Educational Status; D049673:History, 20th Century; D006801:Humans; D047869:Korean War; D008297:Male; D008393:Marriage / Q000266:history* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D008875:Middle Aged; D008889:Military Personnel / Q000266:history / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D011157:Population Dynamics; D012959:Socioeconomic Factors; D018454:Spouses / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D014728:Veterans / Q000266:history* / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D047789:World War II; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Education; Marital sorting; WWII GI Bill