The Impact of College on Migration: Evidence from the Vietnam Generation

We examine the causal effect of education on migration using variation in college attainment due to draft-avoidance behavior during the Vietnam War. We use national and state-level induction risk to identify both college attainment and veteran status for men observed in the 1980 Census. 2SLS estimates imply that additional years of college significantly increased the likelihood that affected men resided outside their birth states later in life. Most of our estimates suggest a causal impact of higher education on migration that is larger in magnitude but not significantly different from the OLS estimates.