Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

It’s commonly thought that military service can facilitate social mobility, particularly for people from poorer areas where few other economic opportunities are available. While this idea has received some attention in the literature, little research exists on this question in the context of developing countries, where various labor market frictions and distortions might make opportunities for social advancement even more limited. Further, there is little research on the particular aspects of military service that might generate greater mobility. This paper aims to address these questions by looking at the long-term effects of military conscription in Argentina, particularly focusing on measures of geographic and social mobility.

Previous studies on the economic effects of military conscription have generated mixed results: in the US, Angrist (1990) found a negative effect of being drafted into the Vietnam War on earnings, but Angrist and Chen (2011) found no earnings effect by the year 2000. Card and Cardoso (2012), on the other hand, found a positive earnings effect of the draft in Portugal for men with only primary education, and no effect on others. The only other paper (to my knowledge) to study the economic effects of the military draft in Argentina is Galiani et al. (2011), which focuses on the effect on crime, but also shows some suggestive evidence that the draft had somewhat adverse effects on employment and earnings.

One useful feature of the draft in Argentina is that it was implemented based on a yearly lottery, using the last 3 digits of the national ID number (DNI). This makes it possible to observe from the DNI and year of birth whether an individual was selected for service, and the branch of the military to which he was assigned (women were not subject to the draft). Crucially, because this assignment is random, it allows me to produce a causal estimate of the effects of conscription, and of assignment to different branches of the military.

I will look at the effects of being drafted on various measures of geographic and social mobility. Indicators of geographic mobility include residence outside of one’s province or region of birth, residence in an urban area, and evidence of moving between provinces. These outcomes are of interest because a large body of research suggests that barriers to physical mobility within a country can have substantial economic effects; for example, Hsieh and Moretti (2017) estimate that barriers to mobility within the US reduced aggregate GDP growth by more than 50% from 1964 to 2009. Indicators of social mobility include occupation, participation in the formal labor market, and earnings. For all of these outcomes, I will examine heterogeneity in effects depending on the place of origin and the branch of service. This will allow me to provide suggestive evidence on the specific channels through which conscription affected these different outcomes, thereby generating results with potential implications for a broad range of policies aimed at generating or improving opportunities for socioeconomic advancement.