The Impact of College Education on Geographic Mobility: Evidence from the Vietnam Generation

College-educated workers are more likely than others to make lasting, long-distance moves, but little is known about the role of college itself in determining geographic mobility. Unobservable characteristics related to selection into college might also drive the relationship between college education and geographic mobility. Using the 5% sample from the 1980 U.S. Census, we provide instrumental variables estimates of the impact of college education on the probability of a long-distance move. We use cohort-level and state-level variation in college attendance and completion arising from draft avoidance behavior among men at risk for conscription into the Armed Forces during the Vietnam conflict to identify the causal effect of college. We find that college completion and some college attendance both significantly increase the probability of a longdistance move. Our preferred estimates imply that graduation increases the probability that a man resides outside his birth state by approximately 15 percentage points. Moreover, using individual data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY) 1979, we find that over half of the mobility advantage to college graduates remains after controlling for ability, parental education, and parental mobility histories while the mobility advantage of students with some college is entirely explained by these factors. (JEL: J61, J24, I23) _________________________________________ Malamud is Assistant Professor of Public Policy at the Harris School at University of Chicago. Wozniak is Assistant Professor of Economics at the University of Notre Dame. Acknowledgments: The authors would like to thank Lawrence Katz, Caroline Hoxby, Edward Vytlacil, and David K. Evans for helpful conversations. Comments from seminar participants at the University of Notre Dame, the Midwest Economics Association Meetings and UIC greatly improved the paper. All remaining errors are our own.