Long-Run Labor Market Effects of Japanese American Internment During World War II on Working-Age Male Internees

In 1942, all Japanese were evacuated from the West Coast and incarcerated in internment camps. To investigate the long-run economic consequences of this historic episode, I exploit the fact that Hawaiian Japanese were not subject to mass internment. I find that the labor market withdrawal induced by the internment reduced the annual earnings of males by as much as nine to thirteen percent twenty-five years afterwards. This is consistent with the predictions of an economic model that equates the labor market withdrawal induced by the internment with a loss of civilian labor market experience or a loss of advantageous job matches. (JEL J15, J31, N32) * Assistant Professor, Department of Economics, University of Houston, McElhinney Building, Houston, TX 77204 (e-mail: [email protected]; phone: (713) 743-3761; fax: (713) 743-3798). I have benefited greatly from comments from Dora Costa, Chinhui Juhn, Walter Oi, participants in the Spring 2001 MIT labor lunch, Spring 2002 Texas Econometrics Camp, 2003 NBER Summer Institute Labor Studies Workshop, University of Texas at Austin Applied Microeconomics Seminar and Texas A&M Applied Microeconomics Workshop, and, especially, Josh Angrist. Financial support from the University of Houston New Faculty Research Grant is gratefully acknowledged. All errors are mine.