The military is the largest employer of young men and women in the United States, each year providing nearly 200,000 new high school graduates with a steady full-time job and potentially valuable vocational training. Young people from disadvantaged backgrounds are often told that joining the U.S. military will put them on a path to future economic success. Surprisingly, though, we know little about how this early employment experience and training affects short- and long-run career outcomes. This project examines the short- and long-run impact of military service on earnings using high- quality administrative data on recent applicants to the U.S. Armed Forces. We will employ two strategies to account for potential differences between applicants who do and do not join the military. First, we will control for a rich set of background characteristics, including some of the key factors used by the military to screen applicants. Second, we will use an instrumental variables strategy based on the sharp discontinuity in the probability of enlistment generated by the military's selection standards. This approach represents a significant departure from earlier research and will yield some of the strongest evidence to date regarding the causal effect of military service on labor market outcomes. To test whether service in the military differentially affects individuals from disadvantaged backgrounds, estimates will be disaggregated by measures of socioeconomic status. This project estimates the causal effect of service in the U.S. military? America's largest employer of young high school graduates? On labor market outcomes. The project will generate estimates that are of particular relevance to understanding the consequences of the early labor market experiences of low-aptitude youth, a group that is disproportionately minority and poor and of particular concern to policymakers. ? ? ?
