Warriors Don’t Bowl Alone: Military Service and Civic Participation

Without much evidence, experts on social capital have dismissed the importance of military service on social capital accumulation. We present evidence from the National Survey of Families and Households (Wave 1: 1987-188) that sharply contradicts these claims. Using an index of civic participation calculated from time spent in activities of civic organizations, we find that veterans have significantly higher rates of civic participation than non-veterans. The results are particularly robust for combat veterans. In our estimation based on a theoretical model of time allocation, combat veterans have a 23% higher rate of civic participation than nonveterans, and non-combat veterans have an 11% higher rate. The positive effects for combat service persist across all age groups in the sample, which is defined as men aged 30-64 (a sample that includes men from all three major conflicts in the mid 20 century). Our analysis of causal pathways rejects the importance of labor supply effects as playing any role in the effect of military service on participation. Additionally, we reject the hypothesis that military service effects are due to the GI Bill or other policies that increase education attainment of veterans, though we find that increased education definitely raises civic participation (as many others have found). The causal pathway for military service appears to be primarily through a transformation of preferences towards civic time. Analysis of participation in specific organizations shows that roughly half of increased participation of combat veterans (excluding participation in veterans groups) is devoted to groups primarily devoted to civic service. Furthermore, the effects of military service on participation in specific groups are negatively correlated with the effects of education, reinforcing the finding that military service has distinct effects from the widely-studied effects of education.