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Article
Military Service and Educational Attainment in the All-Volunteer Era
Sociology of Education (2007)
  • Jay Teachman, Western Washington University
Abstract

This article uses data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth to examine the relation­ ship between service in the All Volunteer Force (AVF) military and educational attainment. Through the use of fixed-effects estimators, the author generated estimates of the effect of military service on the highest grade of school completed by men that are purged of the con­founding effects of constant unmeasured household-specific and person-specific variables. He also implemented another series of controls for selectivity involving potential time-varying fac­tors by comparing active-duty veterans to reserve-duty veterans and nonveterans who at some time indicated their intentions to enter the military. The results indicate that there is consider­able diversity in the effect of military service among veterans according to such variables as education prior to service, score on the Armed Forces Qualification Test, branch of service, length of service, age at entry into the military, and race. Overall, however, veterans of the AVF receive less education than their civilian counterparts, and this educational gap tends to grow over time.

Disciplines
Publication Date
October, 2007
Publisher Statement
Published by: American Sociological Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20452717
Citation Information
Jay Teachman. "Military Service and Educational Attainment in the All-Volunteer Era" Sociology of Education Vol. 80 Iss. 4 (2007)
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/jay_teachman/25/